Web Performance In Action

Summary Web Performance in Action is your companion guide to making websites faster. You'll learn techniques that speed the delivery of your site's assets to the user, increase rendering speed, decrease the overall footprint of your site, as well as how to build a workflow that automates common optimization techniques. Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications. About the Technology Nifty features, hip design, and clever marketing are great, but your website will flop if visitors think it's slow. Network conditions can be unpredictable, and with today's sites being bigger than ever, you need to set yourself apart from the competition by focusing on speed. Achieving a high level of performance is a combination of front-end architecture choices, best practices, and some clever sleight-of-hand. This book will demystify all these topics for you. About the Book Web Performance in Action is your guide to making fast websites. Packed with "Aha!" moments and critical details, this book teaches you how to create performant websites the right way. You'll master optimal rendering techniques, tips for decreasing your site's footprint, and technologies like HTTP/2 that take your website's speed from merely adequate to seriously fast. Along the way, you'll learn how to create an automated workflow to accomplish common optimization tasks and speed up development in the process. What's Inside Foolproof performance-boosting techniques Optimizing images and fonts HTTP/2 and how it affects your optimization workflow About the Reader This book assumes that you're familiar with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Many examples make use of Git and Node.js. About the Author Jeremy Wagner is a professional front-end web developer with over ten years of experience. Foreword by Ethan Marcotte. Table of Contents Understanding web performance Using assessment tools Optimizing CSS Understanding critical CSS Making images responsive Going further with images Faster fonts Keeping JavaScript lean and fast Boosting performance with service workers Fine-tuning asset delivery Looking to the future with HTTP/2 Automating optimization with gulp

"Discover everything you need to know about web performance optimization in one handy volume. If you are in need of effective, easy-to-implement measures to boost your site's performance and improve speed and page load times but are unsure where to start or how to develop your strategy, this guide to web performance is the answer"--

Want your web site to display more quickly? This book presents 14 specific rules that will cut 25% to 50% off response time when users request a page. Author Steve Souders, in his job as Chief Performance Yahoo!, collected these best practices while optimizing some of the most-visited pages on the Web. Even sites that had already been highly optimized, such as Yahoo! Search and the Yahoo! Front Page, were able to benefit from these surprisingly simple performance guidelines. The rules in High Performance Web Sites explain how you can optimize the performance of the Ajax, CSS, JavaScript, Flash, and images that you've already built into your site -- adjustments that are critical for any rich web application. Other sources of information pay a lot of attention to tuning web servers, databases, and hardware, but the bulk of display time is taken up on the browser side and by the communication between server and browser. High Performance Web Sites covers every aspect of that process. Each performance rule is supported by specific examples, and code snippets are available on the book's companion web site. The rules include how to: Make Fewer HTTP Requests Use a Content Delivery Network Add an Expires Header Gzip Components Put Stylesheets at the Top Put Scripts at the Bottom Avoid CSS Expressions Make JavaScript and CSS External Reduce DNS Lookups Minify JavaScript Avoid Redirects Remove Duplicates Scripts Configure ETags Make Ajax Cacheable If you're building pages for high traffic destinations and want to optimize the experience of users visiting your site, this book is indispensable. "If everyone would implement just 20% of Steve's guidelines, the Web would be adramatically better place. Between this book and Steve's YSlow extension, there's reallyno excuse for having a sluggish web site anymore." -Joe Hewitt, Developer of Firebug debugger and Mozilla's DOM Inspector "Steve Souders has done a fantastic job of distilling a massive, semi-arcane art down to a set of concise, actionable, pragmatic engineering steps that will change the world of web performance." -Eric Lawrence, Developer of the Fiddler Web Debugger, Microsoft Corporation

Learn basic and advanced uses of WebPagetest, the performance measurement tool for optimizing websites. This practical guide shows users new to this tool how run tests and interpret results, and helps experienced users gain a better and more thorough understanding of hidden features in WebPagetest that make testing easier. Written by WebPagetest power users and performance experts, this book will help web developers and frontend engineers solve the problem of slow sites. Topics include: Basic test setup—shows beginners how to get meaningful results Advanced test setup—provides another level of technical depth by explaining features not thoroughly documented at webpagetest.org Analysis of results—helps you understand of how to interpret test results Private instance setup—teaches power users the intricacies of the webpagetest private instance and how it works API and external tools—provides a detailed reference for the API and demonstrates tools already using the API to extend WebPagetest

Performance is critical to the success of any website, and help with using today’s new tools is key. In this remarkable guide, 32 leading web performance experts offer practical tips, techniques, and advice for optimizing your site’s user experience. Originally written for an online calendar, this collection of articles will inspire you to squeeze every ounce of performance from your site—whether you’re a web developer, mobile developer, or web designer. Check the table of contents and you’ll be convinced. In order of appearance, Web Performance Daybook authors include: Patrick Meenan Nicholas Zakas Guy Podjarny Stoyan Stefanov Tim Kadlec Brian Pane Josh Fraser Steve Souders Betty Tso Israel Nir Marcel Duran Éric Daspet Alois Reitbauer Matthew Prince Buddy Brewer Alexander Podelko Estelle Weyl Aaron Peters Tony Gentilcore Matthew Steele Bryan McQuade Tobie Langel Billy Hoffman Joshua Bixby Sergey Chernyshev JP Castro Pavel Paulau David Calhoun Nicole Sullivan James Pearce Tom Hughes-Croucher Dave Artz

Summary HTTP/2 in Action is a complete guide to HTTP/2, one of the core protocols of the web. Because HTTP/2 has been designed to be easy to transition to, including keeping it backwards compatible, adoption is rapid and expected to increase over the next few years. Concentrating on practical matters, this interesting book presents key HTTP/2 concepts such as frames, streams, and multiplexing and explores how they affect the performance and behavior of your websites. Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications. About the Technology HTTP—Hypertext Transfer Protocol—is the standard for exchanging messages between websites and browsers. And after 20 years, it's gotten a much-needed upgrade. With support for streams, server push, header compression, and prioritization, HTTP/2 delivers vast improvements in speed, security, and efficiency. About the Book HTTP/2 in Action teaches you everything you need to know to use HTTP/2 effectively. You'll learn how to optimize web performance with new features like frames, multiplexing, and push. You'll also explore real-world examples on advanced topics like flow control and dependencies. With ready-to-implement tips and best practices, this practical guide is sure to get you—and your websites—up to speed! What's Inside HTTP/2 for web developers Upgrading and troubleshooting Real-world examples and case studies QUIC and HTTP/3 About the Reader Written for web developers and site administrators. About the Authors Barry Pollard is a professional developer with two decades of experience developing, supporting, and tuning software and infrastructure. Table of Contents PART 1 MOVING TO HTTP/2 Web technologies and HTTP The road to HTTP/2 Upgrading to HTTP/2 PART 2 USING HTTP/2 HTTP/2 protocol basics Implementing HTTP/2 push Optimizing for HTTP/2 PART 3 ADVANCED HTTP/2 Advanced HTTP/2 concepts HPACK header compression PART 4 THE FUTURE OF HTTP TCP, QUIC, and HTTP/3 Where HTTP goes from here

As a web designer, you encounter tough choices when it comes to weighing aesthetics and performance. Good content, layout, images, and interactivity are essential for engaging your audience, and each of these elements have an enormous impact on page load time and the end-user experience. In this practical book, Lara Hogan helps you approach projects with page speed in mind, showing you how to test and benchmark which design choices are most critical. To get started, all you need are basic HTML and CSS skills and Photoshop experience. Topics include: The impact of page load time on your site, brand, and users Page speed basics: how browsers retrieve and render content Best practices for optimizing and loading images How to clean up HTML and CSS, and optimize web fonts Mobile-first design with performance goals by breakpoint Using tools to measure performance as your site evolves Methods for shaping an organization’s performance culture

Remember when an optimized website was one that merely didn't take all day to appear? Times have changed. Today, website optimization can spell the difference between enterprise success and failure, and it takes a lot more know-how to achieve success. This book is a comprehensive guide to the tips, techniques, secrets, standards, and methods of website optimization. From increasing site traffic to maximizing leads, from revving up responsiveness to increasing navigability, from prospect retention to closing more sales, the world of 21st century website optimization is explored, exemplified and explained. Website Optimization combines the disciplines of online marketing and site performance tuning to attain the competitive advantage necessary on today's Web. You'll learn how to improve your online marketing with effective paid and natural search engine visibility strategies, strengthened lead creation and conversion to sales methods, and gold-standard ad copywriting guidelines. Plus, your increased site speed, reduced download footprint, improved reliability, and improved navigability will work synergistically with those marketing methods to optimize your site's total effectiveness. In this book for business and IT managers, author Andrew King, president of Website Optimization, LLC, has assembled experts in several key specialties to teach you: Search engine optimization -- addressing best (and worst) practices to improve search engine visibility, including step-by-step keyword optimization guidelines, category and tag cloud creation, and guerilla PR techniques to boost inbound links and improve rankings Pay-per-click optimization -- including ad copywriting guidelines, setting profit-driven goals, calculating and optimizing bids, landing page optimization, and campaign management tips Optimizing conversion rates -- increasing leads with site landing page guidelines, such as benefit-oriented copy, credibility-based design, value hierarchies, and tips on creating unique selling propositions and slogans Web performance tuning -- optimizing ways to use (X)HTML, CSS, and Ajax to increase speed, reduce your download footprint, and increase reliability Advanced tuning -- including client-side techniques such as on-demand content, progressive enhancement, and inline images to save HTTP requests. Plus server-side tips include improving parallelism, using cache control, browser sniffing, HTTP compression, and URL rewriting to remap links and preserve traffic Web metrics -- illustrating the best metrics and tools to gather details about visitors and measure web conversion and success rates. Covering both search marketing metrics and web performance measures including Pathloss and waterfall graphs Website Optimization not only provides you with a strategy for success, it also offers specific techniques for you and your staff to follow. A profitable website needs to be well designed, current, highly responsive, and optimally persuasive if you're to attract prospects, convert them to buyers, and get them to come back for more. This book describes precisely what you need to accomplish to achieve all of those goals.