Smart Optimizer

One of the bigger problems I see in the performance space is that a lot of the value of current content management systems and blogging tools is the ability to add widgets or plugins from a lot of different places. These plugins often do not provide compressed and cacheable versions of their content.

In order to get more people to adopt the methods of creating faster web pages, we need to make it easier for them to do so while still a making it easy for them to adhere to performance guidelines. Basically, make it possible for them to eat cat and lose weight at the same time.

I’ve spent part of last evening looking for plugins for WordPress that will find any javascript or css files, combine them into a single file, minify and gzip them, and then set far future expires headers. I’ve got a dream plugin in mind and none of them are quite living up to my fantasy.

One solution that comes close to being my dream is a piece of software called Smart Optimizer. Smart Optimizer used to be called JSmart. It was a project that hadn’t had any updates since July 7, 2006 until two weeks ago when the project was revitalized and the name changed.

Smart Optimizer will:

Set up rewrite rules to intercept any calls to css or js files
Minify, gzip any css or js files
Creates static files on the server for css and js that are gzipped and set for caching
Concatenate css or js files into a single file

It’s an interesting tool that I don’t think a lot of people know of. Take a look.

CSS Sprites to Speed Up Sites

One of the topics I covered during my presentation on site speed was CSS sprites. Today, Andy King published a great article explaining the CSS sprite technique in detail. If you are interested in how Yahoo and AOL use this technique or want to incorporate it in your site, Andy’s article is a good place to start.

Speed Matters: Presentation Files and Resources

Speed Matters: Presentation and Resources

We had an exceptional audience tonight at DevGroup NW for my presentation on how to speed up web pages. There were a lot of good questions and an engaged audience. Thank you to everyone who showed up. Here is my presentation from tonight as well as some of the resources I mentioned.

Speed Matters Presentation (pdf, 8.6MB)
Speed Matter Presentation with My Slightly Incoherent Presenter Notes (pdf, 9.3MB)

The great irony is that I used so many images in my presentation that I can’t compress the pdf files to the degree that I would like. Sorry for the large file size. If it is any consolation, you’ll likely get to fully use your broadband connection unlike when you download web pages and are limited by current connections to a fraction of your connection speed. :-)

Books on Site Performance

High Performance Web Sites by Steve Souders, Yahoo (Not released yet)
Speed Up Your Site by Alex King (Out of print, but available used)

Articles & Resources

Measuring Site Speed

Minimizers and Compressors

Statistics & Studies

Thanks to all of the Flickr users who posted their images with Creative Commons licenses. This presentation wouldn’t have been nearly as interesting without their photographs.