Speed Up Your Site: Web Site Optimization

When the GUIguy reviews books, it is usually with the intent of reading fairly quickly to get a sense of the author's approach, their writing style, and the value of the content.When I picked up Speed Up Your Site: Web Site Optimization, an amazing thing happened: I was captivated by the content and the style. Amazing! A first! I found myself reading every word and every line of code, lest I miss some gem hidden within the letters.Andy King's basic premise is clearly stated: "At current bandwidth-to-CPU speed ratios, bandwidth is the limiting factor." Therefore, optimization of code is vital for a well-received web site.Sure, that's easy to write, but how do you do it?! The author meticulously goes through many, if not all of the ways code can be streamlined, addressing HTML, XHTML, DHTML, CSS, and even more.As for style, you can almost hear the author talking; the conversational tone pervades the tome. The book is a delight to read, and the text is peppered with subtle and not-so-subtle humor like "Link to external style sheets site-wide to cache in." Even code snippets are occasionally injected with nostalgia and rib-ticklers. (There is a reference to Burma Shave signs-search the web if you don't know what that is- and even the Emperor with No Close. (sic))And for those who wonder why all this optimization is important, the author opens with two chapters on the Psychology of Performance, with well-researched excerpts and citations from human factors writings. The forward is even written by usability guru Jakob Nielsen.There is a companion site (http://www.speedupyoursite.com) that contains all the code along with all the references, chapter summaries, chapter excerpts, color figures, etc. After all, web sites are living documents, and having all this information on a web site allows it to be updated easily.The only flaw that I found with the book is that there is no accompanying CD. I would love to be able to search the complete text for suggestions and tips that I probably won't remember when I need them-like when I redo my own web sites, a job that I must undertake now that I have read this book.

Andy King, the guru behind WebReference.com and JavaScript.com, sent me a review copy of his new book "Speed Up Your Site: Web Site Optimization" a few weeks ago, and it absolutely knocked my socks off.If you aren't familiar with Web site optimization (WSO), it's a series of techniques that minimize Web page file sizes and maximize page display speeds. In other words, WSO is simple stuff you can do to the Web pages you create to make those pages load faster. After all, people HATE waiting for slow Web pages.What King has done in "Speed Up Your Site" is not only assemble pretty much every WSO technique known to man, he's also collected the research and conducted the interviews explaining WHY these techniques actually work.While the entire book is exceptional, the four chapters in "Part II - Optimizing Markup: HTML and XHTML" are absolutely worth their weight in gold. It is in these four chapters that King shows you, step-by-step, how to clean up HTML bloat; minimize HTTP requests; tighten up comma-delimited attributes; speed up table rendering; and much, much more. And the results will ASTOUND you.For example, using the techniques in just these four chapters alone, I was able to make my NetSquirrel.com homepage 26.5% smaller and load 42.9% faster. Words can't describe how cool that is.The four chapters in Part II of King's book are accessible to ANYONE who knows simple HTML. That's not quite true for the next five chapters. In "Part III - DHTML Optimization: CSS and JavaScript," King shows you how to optimize your CSS and speed up your JS download and execution speeds. Of course, if [like me] you don't know CSS or JS from a hole in the ground, these five chapters aren't going to be much help to you. CSS and JS aren't topics for the weak of heart, and optimization only makes those topics that much more complex. But, if you *DO* know CSS and JS, King offers step-by-step instructions and real-world examples that show you what you need to do to maximize your page display speeds.Let me also put in a plug for Chapter 15 - Keyword Optimization. This chapter shows you how to fine tune your page's meta keywords so that you can attract both search engines and, more importantly, visitors. Every Web design book tells you that you need to use meta keywords. King actually shows you how to find the meta keywords that yield the highest results. Instead of paying someone else lots of money to attract visitors to your site, follow the 10 steps that King outlines in this chapter. You'll save yourself both time and, more importantly, LOTS of money.As I said earlier, Andy King's "Speed Up Your Site" absolutely knocked my socks off. There are a squillion Web design books out there, but this one belongs on the bookshelf of every serious Web designer.

King has written a masterpiece. Web site response time can literally make or break a Web site's success. Companies spend millions on strategies to drive visitors to their expensive Web sites but if the site doesn't load quickly enough, it's over; you have lost an opportunity to win a new customer. Internet users are not patient! Get your site to pop up quickly or you lose, no matter how many people find your site in search engines or click on your banner ads -- what a terrible waste of marketing dollars!This book is loaded with practical information on speeding load time via changes to HTML, JavaScript, graphics, PDF files, multimedia, and other elements. Plus, it includes an entire chapter on compression, and not just the graphic variety."Speed Up Your Site" is simply a must-read for anyone, not just Web developers, who are responsible for a Web site's success.There's even great data to help you make your case to your boss that you've got a problem that needs to be addressed, and, a powerful chapter on Search Engine Optimization -- a chapter that distills down a great deal of complicated information into some very simple to follow steps that will get your site top rankings in search engines. I read this book, I loved this book, it was easy to read, and I have already sent copies to friends in the industry. It is that valuable. I recommend this book and I encourage you to own it -- you will not be disappointed. It is, hands down, the best book I have read on building or re-designing a Web site.Fredrick Marckini

King's book focuses on an overlooked but critical aspect of website usability: response time. I think it's often overlooked by developers because they tend to have fast machines and fast connections, but even if individual response time is not a concern, the techniques discussed in the book could save money by requiring fewer servers and lower bandwidth requirements.There are two chapters on the psychology of performance, which might provide motivation or ammunition to convincepeople who need convincing. Many of the chapters focus on methods to reduce the size of textual languages likeHTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Better and easier gains are obtained by configuring the server for compression, but many sites do not have that sort of control. The benefits of all these methods are covered well. Optimizing graphics is covered thoroughly, explaining the properties of different formats. Although it is mentioned in a summary, the practice of specifyingthe height and width of images is not explained. It seems so obvious to many developers, but it's a disaster when not followed because the page can not be rendered until the sizes of all the images have been determined. Techniques for writing efficient code are applied to JavaScript, and there is good coverage of what takes a long time to execute on some browsers.The book has a web site: http://www.....com/ It shows figures, chapter summaries, links to resources, etc.

Whenever Web workers attempt to figure out the best ways to ease the user experience by speeding the display and navigation of the screen, we enter a shadowy world of uncertainties, old coders' debates and personal lore. The author has gathered more knowledge on the subject than I have ever seen in one place anywhere. Real examples and authorities are cited to take the suggestions beyond the realm of personal opinion. This is a most satisfactory and valuable book.I might not be able to do all the author suggests since the need for speed must be balanced with other costs such as maintainability by development team members, etc. but now I have a much better idea on what those costs are and how to deal with the options available.Sometimes the book introduced terms without defining them but often my confusion was cleared with the concrete code which followed. The book assumes a high comfort level with JavaScript at least and although I had to squint real hard sometimes, I didn't sprain anything serious.Page download and processing speed is a fascinating aspect of our work -- with lots of surprises.Recently I was approached by a team with a particular problem involving manipulating heavy data tables. A solution was proposed based on loads of JavaScripting on cells. We sped this up by maximizing the use of CSS. We sped this up again by scripting on columns instead of cells. Interestingly, a no-script nifty CSS-only solution resulted in the slowest response for the largest tables. Our final solution was one that combined JavaScript with XSL transformations. You learn something new every day. This book has lots of those new things for you.