This was a great read. Certainly learned a lot of useful lessons on front-end optimizations. Written by Steve Souders (previously lead Optimization efforts at Yahoo!), who also developed YSlow! – a Firefox add-on (actually an add-on to the Firefox add-on called Firebug) that gives your web pages a grade from A through F and tells you how to make it better.
Anywhoot, here’s what I got from it:
- Reduce as many HTTP requests as possible.
- Minify CSS and optimize it (reduce duplication).
- Minify HTML (get away from tables)
- For design components (background images, button images, nav images), use CSS sprites.
- Use PNG for design components (they compress better than GIF, have partial transparency, and can have greater color palettes).
- Gzip non-binary data like HTML.
A summary of his optimization rules are found here, but of course, it’s not as detailed as the book: http://stevesouders.com/hpws/rules.php .