Doctype: Speed

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In this week’s 8 minute episode of Doctype Jim and Nick show you hot tips to get your site loading fast.

We will be bringing you one further episodes of Doctype so be sure to check back next Tuesday for the last installment.

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Comments

  • http://www.glennweatherson.com Glenn Weatherson

    Thanks for the tips. Cheers.

  • Kevin

    I’ve found 8-bit PNGs are pretty much always more efficient at handling small/simple images versus GIFs. I rarely use GIFs anymore.

    • http://doctype.tv Nick Pettit

      You are correct, a .png will almost always offer better compression over .gifs. However, I have found some rare instances where a .gif was actually better (it always surprises me). It’s worth trying, especially when dealings with mobile devices or highly trafficked websites, where every kilobyte counts.

  • http://askem.ba Kemo

    Nothing new, more advertising than useful info. Those few tips about speed are so well known nowadays, Yahoo! with their YSlow, whole Firebug ‘tutorials movement’, posts on blogs like Smashing etc.

    • Keir Whitaker

      Hey Kemo, sorry to hear you didn’t find it useful.

      We think the guys at Doctype are doing a great job. One of our aims is to offer content to designers and developers whether they are starting out or have been doing it for years. We have a number of more advanced articles lined up in the next few weeks so do check back.

    • http://doctype.tv/ Nick Pettit

      Hey Kemo,

      I’m sorry to hear you didn’t like Doctype. We’ve heard different reactions, ranging from “too advanced” to people that feel the same way as you. We try to keep episodes short so that people can fit them into their chaotic schedules, which sometimes means that we can’t go as in depth as we would like.

      However, I feel that our show’s strength comes from the breadth of the material, rather than depth. Busy freelancers don’t have time to try out every single code library and new technique, so we try to package up the best ones and showcase them. If you want to learn more beyond that, there’s no better tutorial than exploring on your own.

      I encourage you to check out some of our past episodes. You might be able to glean a bit more from them, if you didn’t learn anything from this one.

  • Simon

    Hello and thanks for this nice tips.
    As Kemo said, most of them are already common knowledge for most of us but it’s important for new developers or designers to know such things.
    I might be wrong but the limit of two connections per browser is really outdated. Nowadays most browser open way more connections than before. As you can read on Yahoo’s performance blog, using multiple domains can be interesting in order to open up to 8 connections. Over this limit, there’s no gain any more and the page does need even more time to load. Given that most browsers (IE8, FF, Safari, Chrome, Opera) use now 6 persistent connections at a time, using a CDN will at least increase this to 12 and might reducing performance and loading time.
    Still, this tips are useful and I thank you for this nice videos :)

  • Dan P

    ahhhggg the commercials!

    Good information for anyone who hasn’t found this out elsewhere. Speed is very key. A user waiting one more second than they thought they’d have to will easily leave.

    I understand plugging great apps is a service to both parties, but at the end there, oh man. So cheesily presented.

    (Sorry guys, I still love the show)