There are plenty of ways to make websites run faster. In this section, you can discover performance best practices that real web professionals employ in their everyday work. These practices have improved the user experience for millions of users and we hope they are going to be useful for other web developers.
CSS: Using every declaration just once
Using every CSS declaration only once is an effective way to reduce file size of style sheets. It’s not a trivial optimization technique though: Watch over the cascade and adjust your editing workflow.
How gzip compression works
This article first explains how gzip compression works in a transaction between a web server and a web browser. Then, we look into what gzip actually compresses, so that you can leverage compression in your markup.
HTTP caching
Web pages can load much faster on repeated visits if the resources come from the cache. Learn about two groups of HTTP headers that make all the difference.
Improving website performance with Page Speed
It is often possible to make the contents of a web page take fewer bytes without changing the appearance or function of the page. Reducing the number of bytes a client has to download makes the page load faster. In this tutorial we look at three ways to reduce the size of web content.
Minimizing browser reflow
Reflow is a CPU-intensive and user-blocking part of the browser rendering process. This article discusses some coding best practices to minimize reflow for your web pages.
Optimizing JavaScript code
JavaScript can make your webapps dynamic and active, but the interpretation on the client can introduce its own inefficiencies. Here we discuss some tips to optimize your JavaScript.
Optimizing web graphics
Optimizing your web illustrations, icons, and graphics is one of the simplest yet most effective ways to decrease your page load time. In this tutorial, we discuss image file formats and optimize some real Google graphics for faster download on the web.
PHP performance tips
This article provides a few easy tips that can help you to speed up your existing PHP scripts by making some simple changes.
Prefetching resources
In some cases, it makes sense to download files before they are necessary, so that they are instantly available once requested. When the resources required for a page can be loaded in advance, the user-perceived network latency for that page can be significantly reduced or even eliminated.
Properly including stylesheets and scripts
Correctly ordering external stylesheets and external and inline scripts enables better parallelization of downloads and speeds up browser rendering time.
Reducing the file size of HTML documents
HTML has some tags that are optional and can thus be omitted. In HTML 5, a shorter DOCTYPE and a few other techniques help reducing file size and load time of your HTML documents too.
UI messaging and perceived latency
To the typical user, speed doesn't only mean performance - it means the ability to use your website efficiently. Learn how to deliver effective UI messaging, a crucial part of keeping your users engaged and productive.
