Performance Advent Calendar 2009
2010 update:
Lo, the Web Performance Advent Calendar hath moved
I like 24ways.org's idea of a webdev advent calendar - publishing one article per day from Dec 1st to Dec 24. I thought it would be cool to have the same thing on web performance topics. Our young performance community would benefit from a year-end heartwarming bunch of articles, maybe some motivational, some wrapping up interesting ideas and techniques that popped up in the past year, this kind of stuff. Ideally it would be a co-effort by performance folks from around the world, but lacking the PM skills and time to organize it (and coming up with the idea kinda late) I'll try to start alone, hopefully next year it would be a community effort.
So this is now just a placeholder post, I'll update it with links to the articles as I write them, one per day is the plan, will see how it will work. So watch this space, you can follow me via the RSS feed or Twitter.
I have a preliminary idea of the articles I intend to write, but it's not at all final or complete, so if you want to see an article on something, or you want to write a guest post, please comment or get in touch in email.
- The performance roadmap
- Performance tools
- Required reading
- Psychology of performance
- Reducing the number of page components
- The pain points of having fewer components
- Data URIs, MHTML and IE7/Win7/Vista blues
- Collecting web data with a faster, free server by Christian Heilmann
- Duplicates and near-duplicates
- Caching vs. inlining
- Reducing the payload: compression, minification, 204s
- Big list of image optimization tools
- Give PNG a chance (video)
- Free-falling waterfalls
- JavaScript loading strategies by Ara Pehlivanian
- How To Measure Web Site Performance by Eric Goldsmith
- Rendering: repaint, reflow/relayout, restyle
- DOM access optimization
- The new game show: "Will it reflow?"
- Extreme JavaScript optimization by Ara Pehlivanian
- Progressive rendering via multiple flushes
- iPhone caching
- CSS performance: UI with fewer images
- The performance business pitch
This entry was posted on Monday, November 30th, 2009 and is filed under images, performance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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December 1st, 2009 at 9:29 am
It is a wonderful idea to write down a serials about web performance. To me, the most interested thing is about combining js, css files. I know that there are lots of tools dealing about static combine js, css files, but is it a way to combine those files dynamically and not hurt the browser cache?
December 2nd, 2009 at 4:13 am
I’d started writing my performance series a little while ago but with all the travel that I’m doing, it’s getting really hard to find the time to fit things in.
December 2nd, 2009 at 4:21 am
@Daniel, you can have a script on the server side to combine all the CSS/JS for you and, as long as it sends proper headers, it won’t hurt the cache.
For an example, check Marco’s blog post on how he did this as part of a WordPress optimization plugin:
http://www.i-marco.nl/weblog/archive/2007/05/27/on_a_quest_for_ultimate_websit
code: http://www.i-marco.nl/wp_css_streamliner.phps
@Philip, so should I gather you’re not volunteering to write a guest blog for my series
December 2nd, 2009 at 7:19 am
I’d like to participate next year
No time for writing right now …
December 5th, 2009 at 9:22 am
Very good idea! I read the first articles and it’s very interesting, as usual.
December 7th, 2009 at 8:48 pm
Great idea! I’d be really interested in a review of the website accelerators…or semi-automators out there. Site speed issues for our sites are my responsibility but I don’t want to become a frontend engineer! Have allocated budget for this issue in light of Google changes next year and just want to get something that will optimize relatively hands free – too much to ask? Your view on whats out there would be very useful.
December 12th, 2009 at 11:30 pm
These are some kick-ass articles on optimization. My colleagues and I look forward to reading your articles everyday. Keep up the good work.
December 14th, 2009 at 10:30 am
@jeff
I am glad that I found this thread. The company that I work with (www.strangeloopnetworks.com) has developed an appliance that optimizes web application performance automatically, relieving you of the need to performance the tuning dance over and over. We have just finished up a few presentations at the Velocity Online conference and I understand they will be available online for viewing soon.
Please check out our website for more information, or shoot me an email at marc.sherwood@strangeloopnetworks.com
December 14th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
Ouch, some classless promotion above, wouldn’t go with a hardware solution personally – always ends up being a lot more expensive in my experience. Jeff, stick around this blog and you’ll learn some goos skills that you can apply.
Nice concept Stoyan, always a good read.
December 15th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
@Joe – I would not say that that was classless promotion. @jeff has asked for information on just what I posted. I think it makes sense for people to have a look at several options before locking themselves down to one type of solution.
I would be interested to hear your thoughts on hardware solutions tend to be more expensive. The reason that I ask is that with an automated hardware solution you get to peak performance right away in place of the weeks, or longer, than it takes to optimize code manually. When you application is responsible for revenue the quicker you can make it faster the more revenue it can generate.
June 14th, 2010 at 4:33 am
“CSS performance: UI with fewer images” was just amazing, i’ve never used that features before!
August 17th, 2010 at 9:14 pm
wow, at first I found the amazing post Data URIs, MHTML and IE7/Win7/Vista blues and got an idea to translate it to Chinese so that web engineers in China can read it more easily. then I went here and found more precious topics.
. wonderful job!
August 18th, 2010 at 2:18 pm
Dang! After 6+ years in the front end game I’m always stoked to find a gem of information on all this. Plus I’m late to this party too, I have catching up to do.
Thanks for posting all this fantastic research.
August 18th, 2010 at 9:39 pm
A compilation so many articles is a great reference and learning opportunity. This is a great post and I have already made it to your number 14 and intend to read them all. I just wanted to say thank you for a really great read. I intend to find more that you have written. Thanks!
August 27th, 2010 at 3:04 am
I hope this year would be a great year for the advent calendar 2010 on 24ways.org. I’m french and i come every year to see these posts ! What a great content !
August 27th, 2010 at 4:49 pm
Performance CSS: with fewer images” was just amazing, i’ve never used that features before!
October 24th, 2010 at 6:08 pm
Hy,
i have some problems with ie6 and css, where can i find some help ?
November 16th, 2010 at 12:13 pm
Very good idea! I read the first articles and it’s very interesting, as usual..
November 29th, 2010 at 6:56 pm
[...] 24 This post is the last article in the 2009 performance advent calendar [...]
November 29th, 2010 at 9:46 pm
[...] 11 This post is part of the 2009 performance advent calendar experiment. Stay tuned for the next [...]
December 1st, 2010 at 5:42 am
[...] by the work of Stoyan on his performance advent calendar I decided to start an application performance almanac. According to wikipedia an almanac is [...]
January 1st, 2011 at 4:50 am
[...] (@stoyanstefanov45) Coder of Smush.it and member of the performance team at Yahoo. Created his own advent calendar of performance tips46 this year, and runs Performance Planet, as mentioned [...]
January 6th, 2011 at 5:50 pm
i really appreciate your work
January 7th, 2011 at 6:02 am
hmmm…
nice post
my english is bad, but it’ interesting
January 31st, 2011 at 3:16 pm
[...] space. We started this project at the beginning of the year inspired by Stoyan Stefanov’s performance advent calendar of 2009. (There is also one for [...]
April 13th, 2011 at 1:06 am
[...] has a good blog post today as part of his Performance Advent series about required reading for web developers. He covered some great books. All three of the [...]
May 27th, 2011 at 10:21 am
I will try to follow you on twitter and this seem very good actually.
June 12th, 2011 at 6:47 am
[...] and half ago I did this Performance advent calendar experiment (since moved to a new home), writing an article a day for 24 days (sounds vaguely familiar?). [...]
June 20th, 2011 at 6:27 am
[...] Stefanov is known as one of the ‘sultans of speed’. In December 2009 he wrote a 24-day series on page speed which turned into a book offer. He’s now writing that book in true open-sourced [...]
October 18th, 2011 at 5:46 pm
[...] 21 This post is part of the 2009 performance advent calendar experiment. Stay tuned for the articles to [...]
November 1st, 2011 at 5:14 pm
[...] 6 This is the sixth in the series of performance articles as part of my 2009 performance advent calendar experiment. Stay tuned for the next [...]
June 6th, 2012 at 1:32 am
[...] in December of 2009 I wanted to give an overview of the web performance optimization (WPO) discipline. I decided on a [...]
August 19th, 2012 at 8:53 am
A compilation so many articles is a great reference and learning opportunity. This is a great post and I have already made it to your number 14 and intend to read them all. I just wanted to say thank you for a really great read. I intend to find more that you have written. Thanks!
August 22nd, 2012 at 4:31 pm
[...] 17 This post is part of the 2009 performance advent calendar experiment. Stay tuned for the articles to [...]
October 12th, 2012 at 7:29 am
Nice idea this webdev advent calendar !
March 23rd, 2013 at 3:58 am
Cheers! It is appropriate time to make some plans for the future and it is time to be happy. Sensory play is one of the most worthy experiences http://www.tasteslikejustice.com/node/1#comment-116379