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December 12, 2006
HTTP request costs
HTTP request costs: This article is a great summary of the major cause of webpage slowness today: too many network requests. Modern browsers are currently configured to fulfill only two simultaneous requests to any given web domain at a time. This means that if you've got a hundred little .GIFs and .JSs and .CSSs, then you'll have two streams of 50 sequential requests, with each request having its own request/response/fulfill/close cycle of connections. It's possible to pipeline multiple requests together, but this requires non-default settings in both server and client, and isn't always practical yet. Performance tips include: use HTTP keepalive when possible; consolidate requests ("one big file loads faster than two smaller ones"); use multiple host names to enable more simultaneous connections in default browser configurations; examine caching and conditional GET to minimize repeat transfers; minimize cookies on the serving domain; test compression options in your audience's current browsers; regularly test the site with slow connections and benchmarking tools. Thanks to Aaron Hopkins for the writeup; the page is open in my browser from another MXNA link, but I've forgotten who told me about this page...?
Posted by JohnDowdell at December 12, 2006 02:26 PM
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Comments
FZip and the Flash Player to the rescue:
http://codeazur.com.br/lab/fzip/
http://codeazur.com.br/lab/fzip/demo/
Posted by: Claus Wahlers at December 12, 2006 07:05 PM
Maybe this info could be shared with those creating the Adobe page system/setup?... please... :)
Posted by: Dave_Matthews at December 13, 2006 11:52 AM