iOS Browsers Speed Bakeoff

Apple has always allowed only one browser rendering-engine on the iOS platform – the one included by default. Both the native browser (Mobile Safari) and the browser embedded into apps (UIWebView) use this engine. In addition, any alternate browser on iOS, most notably Chrome for iOS, must use UIWebView and not their own engines.

Introducing LQIP – Low Quality Image Placeholders

For web pages today, images are a real challenge.

Akamai IO - Going Global

I’m writing this short post to update you on a significant change in Akamai IO’s data source. Since its inception, IO’s data was based on many websites, but most of those sites catered to a US audience. This means that the data set was biased – it included global traffic, but held a disproportionate amount of traffic from the US.

Real World RWD Performance - Take 2

About a year ago, I ran a test comparing the performance of websites using Responsive Web Design (RWD) across different screen resolutions. The test consisted of loading the same RWD sites in Chrome using 4 different screen resolutions, triggering different “views” of the site, and comparing bandwidth and load times in each.

HTTP/2.0 is good news for CDNs and FEO

In case you didn’t hear, a new HTTP version is coming to town. There’s a lot of great information about it, including a recent post by Stephen Ludin and a recent presentation by Mark Nottingham.

Responsive Web Design Makes It Hard To Be Fast

I like Responsive Design. Heck, I LOVE Responsive Design. I think it’s a brilliant methodology, which address true challenges in a very good way. But no matter how fond you are of RWD, I think you have to face the music – RWD makes it very hard to write a fast website.

Consolidation - Not Simple Addition

Consolidation of JavaScript and CSS files is one of the simplest Front-End Optimization techniques. Its goal is to reduce the number of roundtrips to the server, and thus save time and resources. Implementation is simple – Take all the (textual) JS files linked on a page, paste them into one large file, and make your page point to that resource. Repeat for CSS, and e-voila, you have a faster page.

Mobile Browser Cache Sizes - Round 2

Just over a year ago I posted the results of my research about Mobile Browser cache sizes. At the time, there was general consensus mobile browser cache was small, but a lack of concrete numbers to support it. I created some cookie-based measurement tool, which helped confirm mobile browser cache sizes were indeed far smaller than desktop browsers.