Overview
There's a time bomb on the web: user patience. It starts ticking each time someone opens one of your pages. You only have a few seconds to get compelling content onto the screen. Fail, and you can kiss your customers and profits goodbye.
You can't count on fast connections either. Most of your customers are still sucking content through a 56K straw. You have to serve up greased lightning or they'll bail. That's why you picked up this book. In it you'll learn how to cut file sizes in half. You'll trim (X)HTML, CSS, graphics, JavaScript, multimedia, and bandwidth costs. Real-world examples illustrate techniques with before and after code and percentage savings. After reading this book, you'll know how to make your pages literally "pop" onto the screen.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
The Barnes & Noble ReviewSlow sites stink. Broadband isn't the solution: It'll be nearly 2005 before even half of your visitors have it. Many sites are unacceptably slow even at cable modem speeds. And you're paying to serve all that crud. What to do? Read Speed Up Your Site -- and do what it tells you.
Andrew B. King begins with the "psychology" of web performance. How fast is "fast enough"? What does the research say? How do you give users the pleasurable experience of "flow" as they navigate your site? Then, it's on to optimizations of every imaginable type: HTML and XHTML; CSS, JavaScript, and DHTML; graphics and multimedia, server-side techniques and GZIP compression -- which can slash HTML file size by 80 percent.
You'll discover "crunchers" that shorten scripts dramatically (and make them harder to steal). You'll learn how to refactor JavaScripts for speed (for example, by minimizing DOM interaction and tuning regular expressions). You'll learn how to shoot photos for better JPEG compression (minimize background details by using large apertures or telephoto lenses); and how to control compression more finely with third-party tools.
King sought out one of the most bloated home pages he could find: a prominent magazine that, at 138,548 Kb, is a "poster child" for site optimization. He then put that page on a "crash diet." He used SpaceAgent to squeeze out 27 percent in associated HTML junk. He eliminated redundant CSS and overly complex JavaScript. He trimmed overspecified tables and excess comments; eliminated lengthy absolute links; and finally, applied compression. At 8.4 Kb, the revamped page loads in less than three seconds at 56K. Amazing. Bill Camarda
Bill Camarda is a consultant, writer, and web/multimedia content developer. His 15 books include Special Edition Using Word 2000 and Upgrading & Fixing Networks for Dummies, Second Edition.