High Performance Web Sites

What Hacker News says

1. TammyEvertsMar 2024
   I've been working in the performance industry (focusing on front-end performance and UX) for 15 years. Some resources you might find helpful:

   • Steve Souders' books 'High Performance Web Sites' & 'Even Faster Web Sites' – https://stevesouders.com/ – Steve literally wrote the book(s) on performance and is widely considered the godfather of the industry.

   • WPO stats – https://wpostats.com/ – Case studies and experiments demonstrating the impact of performance optimization on UX and business metrics

   • performance.now() talks – https://www.youtube.com/c/WebConferencesAmsterdam/videos – PerfNow is the only annual global conference dedicated to performance. You can watch past talks on their YouTube channel.

   • Intro to Web Performance – https://support.speedcurve.com/docs/psychology-of-web-perfor... – This is a collection of introductory articles covering topics like the psychology of sit speed to Core Web Vitals to how to create a performance culture in your organization.

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2. tracker1Mar 2023
   A bit older, but both worth a read, and most of this is still relevant today...

   https://www.amazon.com/High-Performance-Web-Sites-Essential/...

   https://www.amazon.com/Even-Faster-Web-Sites-Performance/dp/...

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3. tracker1Aug 2017
   I find the Steve Souders' books [1] "High Performance Web Sites" and "Even Faster Web Sites" methods are still fairly practical, not all of it applicable to JS directly, but still.

   In the end, you'll need to test your changes in the most common browsers that affect you, because each browser's JS engine can vary a lot. The lookup cost you mention can be deceptively expensive, especially if you have anything resembling a deeper inheritance tree, or worse, proxies, getters/setters etc.

   In the end, a lot of it doesn't matter, until it does.

   [1] https://www.amazon.com/s/?keywords=steve+souders

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4. currysausageDec 2013
   Put "Shared knowledge for the open web" on just one line. It will look less clumsy, plus there will be more content "above the fold." (More content above the fold would be great on other pages, too.)

   Generally speaking, dealing with developer docs, "less is more" is almost always true. I love elaborate design, but here, visual clarity and speed are key. Finding things quickly is more important than beautiful fonts and graphics. Therefore, take an "un-design" approach. This iteration of MDN certainly is a step into the right direction.

   I love Open Sans, but, at least on Windows, Arial is more legible (and doesn't have to be downloaded first.)

   Menu fade effects are cool as long as I perceive them subliminally; 400ms (?) feels extremely sluggish.

   As others have noted, page load times still need to improve considerably. In order to find my way around tech docs, I have to browse a lot; therefore, pages can't load fast enough. Grab a copy of "High Performance Web Sites" and heed the rules outlined there. 9 CSS files are not okay! >10 JS files are not okay! (Why would you even need that much code for simple docs pages?)

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5. daniellmbMar 2011
   Great start! Here are a few other books I've read recently and marked the crap out of because there is so much good information in them.

     - JavaScript Patterns by Stoyan Stefanov
     - High Performance JavaScript by Nicholas C. Zakas
     - High Performance Web Sites by Steve Souders
     - Even Faster Web Sites by Steve Souders
   

   Here are a few I haven't read yet but are on my to read list.

     - Object-Oriented JavaScript by Stoyan Stefanov
     - Pro JavaScript Design Patterns by Dustin Diaz, Ross Harmes

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6. gruseomJan 2011
   The definitive treatment of every item on that list, and more, is Steve Souders' book (http://www.amazon.com/High-Performance-Web-Sites-Essential/d...) Get it immediately and do what he says. In my experience, the differences are very material.

   The one thing I would add is: wherever possible, give resources immutable URLs (that is, when a resource changes, change its URL) and tell the browser to cache them not for an hour but forever. This saves endless wailing and gnashing of teeth on both sides of the browser-cache abyss (i.e. things not being cached when you want them to and -- much worse -- things being cached when you don't want them to). Seriously, this rule changes misery to joy.

   p.s. While copying the above link I noticed that Souders published a sequel (Even Faster Web Sites). Who here has read it? Can you report how good it is?

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