Even Faster Web Sites

http://stevesouders.com/docs/velocity-20090622.ppt
Disclaimer: This content does not necessarily reflect the opinions of my employer.

the importance of frontend performance

9% 91%

17%

83%

iGoogle, primed cache

iGoogle, empty cache

time spent on the frontend

www.aol.com www.ebay.com www.facebook.com www.google.com/search search.live.com/results www.msn.com www.myspace.com Empty Cache 97% 95% 95% 47% 67% 98% 98% Primed Cache 97% 81% 81% 0% 0% 94% 98%

en.wikipedia.org/wiki www.yahoo.com www.youtube.com

94% 97% 98%

91% 96% 97%

April 2008

The Performance Golden Rule

80-90% of the end-user response time is spent on the frontend. Start there.
greater potential for improvement simpler proven to work

Sept 2007

June 2009

14 RULES

1. MAKE FEWER HTTP REQUESTS 2. USE A CDN 3. ADD AN EXPIRES HEADER 4. GZIP COMPONENTS 5. PUT STYLESHEETS AT THE TOP 6. PUT SCRIPTS AT THE BOTTOM 7. AVOID CSS EXPRESSIONS 8. MAKE JS AND CSS EXTERNAL 9. REDUCE DNS LOOKUPS 10.MINIFY JS 11.AVOID REDIRECTS 12.REMOVE DUPLICATE SCRIPTS 13.CONFIGURE ETAGS 14.MAKE AJAX CACHEABLE

Even Faster Web Sites

Splitting the initial payload Loading scripts without blocking Coupling asynchronous scripts Positioning inline scripts Sharding dominant domains Flushing the document early Using iframes sparingly Simplifying CSS Selectors Understanding Ajax performance..........Doug Crockford Creating responsive web apps............Ben Galbraith, Dion Almaer Writing efficient JavaScript.............Nicholas Zakas Scaling with Comet.....................Dylan Schiemann Going beyond gzipping...............Tony Gentilcore Optimizing images...................Stoyan Stefanov, Nicole Sullivan

Why focus on JavaScript?

Yahoo! Wikipedia eBay AOL MySpace YouTube Facebook

scripts block
<script src="A.js"> blocks parallel downloads and rendering

9 secs: IE 6-7, FF 3.0, Chr 1, Op 9-10, Saf 3

7 secs: IE 8, FF 3.5(?), Chr 2, Saf 4

http://stevesouders.com/cuzillion/?ex=10008

What's Cuzillion?

Splitting the Initial Payload

JavaScript Functions Executed before onload

www.aol.com www.ebay.com www.facebook.com www.google.com/search search.live.com/results www.msn.com www.myspace.com en.wikipedia.org/wiki www.yahoo.com www.youtube.com

115K 183K 1088K 15K 17K 131K 297K 114K 321K 240K 252K avg

30% 44% 9% 45% 24% 31% 18% 32% 13% 18% 26% avg

Splitting the Initial Payload

split your JavaScript between what's needed to render the page and everything else load "everything else" after the page is rendered separate manually (Firebug); tools needed to automate this (Doloto from Microsoft) load scripts without blocking how?

MSN.com: parallel scripts

MSN
Scripts and other resources downloaded in parallel! How? Secret sauce?!
var p= g.getElementsByTagName("HEAD")[0]; var c=g.createElement("script"); c.type="text/javascript"; c.onreadystatechange=n; c.onerror=c.onload=k; c.src=e; p.appendChild(c)

Loading Scripts Without Blocking

XHR Eval

XHR Injection
Script in Iframe Script DOM Element Script Defer document.write Script Tag

Script DOM Element

var se = document.createElement('script'); se.src = 'http://anydomain.com/A.js'; document.getElementsByTagName('head') [0].appendChild(se);

script and main page domains can differ no need to refactor JavaScript

http://stevesouders.com/cuzillion/?ex=10010

browser busy indicators

Loading Scripts Without Blocking

|| domains existing browser ensures downcan scripts busy order loads differ size (bytes)

normal Script Src XHR Eval XHR Injection

no IE,FF IE,FF

yes no no

yes no yes

IE,FF no no

IE,FF no no

~50 ~500 ~500

Script in Iframe Script DOM Element Script Defer document.write Script Tag

IE,FF
IE,FF IE

no
yes yes

no
yes yes

IE,FF
FF IE,FF

no
FF IE

~50
~200 ~50

IE*

yes

yes

IE,FF

IE

~100

*Only

other document.write scripts are downloaded in parallel (in the same script block).

and the winner is...

XHR Eval XHR Injection Script in iframe Script DOM Element Script Defer
different domains same domains

Script DOM Element Script Defer

no order
preserve order

no order

preserve order

XHR Eval XHR Injection Script in iframe Script DOM Element (IE)

Script DOM Element (FF) Script Defer (IE) Managed XHR Eval Managed XHR Injection
no busy show busy

Script DOM Element

Script DOM Element (FF) Script Defer (IE)

Managed XHR Injection Managed XHR Eval

no busy

show busy

Script DOM Element (FF) Script Defer (IE) Managed XHR Eval Managed XHR Injection

XHR Injection XHR Eval Script DOM Element (IE)

Managed XHR Injection Managed XHR Eval Script DOM Element

asynchronous JS example: menu.js

script DOM element approach

<script type="text/javascript"> var domscript = document.createElement('script'); domscript.src = "menu.js"; document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(domscri pt); var aExamples = [ ['couple-normal.php', 'Normal Script Src'], ['couple-xhr-eval.php', 'XHR Eval'], ... ['managed-xhr.php', 'Managed XHR'] ]; function init() { EFWS.Menu.createMenu('examplesbtn', aExamples); } init(); </script>

before after

Loading Scripts Without Blocking

|| domains existing browser ensures downcan scripts busy order loads differ size (bytes)

normal Script Src XHR Eval XHR Injection

no IE,FF IE,FF

yes no no

yes no yes

IE,FF no no

IE,FF no no

~50 ~500 ~500

Script in Iframe Script DOM Element Script Defer document.write Script Tag

IE,FF
IE,FF IE

no
yes yes

no
yes yes

IE,FF
FF IE,FF

no

~50

FF !IE ~200 IE ~50

IE*

yes

yes

IE,FF

IE

~100

*Only

other document.write scripts are downloaded in parallel (in the same script block).

what about

inlined code
that depends on the script?

coupling techniques
hardcoded callback

window onload
timer

degrading script tags

script onload

technique 5: script onload

<script type="text/javascript"> var aExamples = [['couple-normal.php', 'Normal Script Src'], ...]; function init() { EFWS.Menu.createMenu('examplesbtn', aExamples); } var domscript = document.createElement('script'); domscript.src = "menu.js";

domscript.onloadDone = false; domscript.onload = function() { if ( ! domscript.onloadDone ) { init(); } domscript.onloadDone = true; }; domscript.onreadystatechange = function() { if ( "loaded" === domscript.readyState ) { if ( ! domscript.onloadDone ) { init(); } domscript.onloadDone = true; } }
document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(domscript); </script>

pretty nice, medium complexity

asynchronous loading & coupling

async technique: Script DOM Element
easy, cross-browser doesn't ensure script order

coupling technique: script onload

fairly easy, cross-browser ensures execution order for external script and inlined code

multiple interdependent external and inline scripts:

much more complex (see hidden slides) concatenate your external scripts into one!

bad: stylesheet followed by inline script

browsers download stylesheets in parallel with other resources that follow... ...unless the stylesheet is followed by an inline script
http://stevesouders.com/cuzillion/?ex=10021

best to move inline scripts above stylesheets or below other resources use Link, not @import

Positioning Inline Scripts

MSN Wikipedia eBay MySpace

Sharding Dominant Domains

but Rule 9 says "Reduce DNS lookups"?!
remove DNS lookups that aren't heavily used split domains that are on the critical path

how find "critical path"?

www.yahoo.com

news.google.com
http://news.google.com

connections per server by browser

HTTP/1.1
IE 6,7 IE 8 Firefox 1.5, 2 Firefox 3 Safari 3,4 Chrome Opera 9 2 6 2 6 4 6 4

HTTP/1.0
4 6 8 6 4 6 4

newer browsers open more connections*

best to shard across 2-4 domains**
* http://www.stevesouders.com/blog/2008/03/20/roundup-on-parallel-connections/ ** http://yuiblog.com/blog/2007/04/11/performance-research-part-4/

flushing the document early

html image image script html image image script

gotchas:

call PHP's flush()

PHP output_buffering ob_flush() Transfer-Encoding: chunked gzip Apache's DeflateBufferSize before 2.2.8 proxies and anti-virus software browsers Safari (1K), Chrome (2K) HTML document blocks resources $| or FileHandle autoflush (Perl), flush (Python), ios.flush (Ruby)

other languages:

successful flushing
Google Search
google image image script image 204

http://www.google.com/images/nav_logo4.png

external resource downloaded early content visible to the user

Using Iframes Sparingly

most expensive DOM element

blocks parent's onload

workaround: set iframe src via setTimeout
<iframe id=if1 src=""></iframe> <script type="text/javascript"> function setSrc() { document.getElementById('if1').src="url"; } setTimeout(setSrc, 0); </script>

types of CSS selectors

ID selectors: #toc {} class selectors: .chapter {} type selectors: A {} adjacent sibling selectors: H1 + #toc {} child selectors: #toc > LI {} descendant selectors: #toc A {} universal selectors: * {} attribute selectors: href="#index"] {} psuedo classes and elements: A:hover {}

writing efficient CSS

https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Writing_Efficient_CSS "The style system matches a rule by starting with the rightmost selector and moving to the left through the rule's selectors. As long as your little subtree continues to check out, the style system will continue moving to the left until it either matches the rule or bails out because of a mismatch."

#toc > LI { font-weight: bold; }

find every LI whose parent is id="toc"

#toc A { color: #444; }

find every A and climb its ancestors until id="toc" or DOM root (!) is found

real world levels of CSS

# Rules # elements
AOL eBay Facebook Google Search Live Search MSN.com MySpace 2289 305 2882 92 376 1038 932 1628 588 1966 552 449 886 444

Avg Depth
13 14 17 8 12 11 9

Wikipedia
Yahoo! YouTube average

795
800 821 1033

1333
564 817 923

10
13 9 12

testing typical CSS

1K rules (vs. 20K) same amount of CSS in all test pages 30 ms avg delta "costly"selectors aren't always costly (at typical levels) are these selectors "costly"?
DIV DIV DIV P A.class0007 { ... }
http://www.stevesouders.com/blog/2009/03/10/performance-impact-of-css-selectors/

testing expensive selectors

1K rules (vs. 20K) same amount of CSS in all test pages 2126 ms avg delta! truly expensive selector

compare to:

A.class0007 * { ... }
DIV DIV DIV P A.class0007 { ... }

the key is the key selector the rightmost argument

Simplifying CSS Selectors

efficient CSS comes at a cost page weight focus optimization on selectors where the key selector matches many elements reduce the number of selectors

Performance Tools

HttpWatch http://www.httpwatch.com/ Firebug http://getfirebug.com/ Page Speed http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/ YSlow http://developer.yahoo.com/yslow/ Smush.it http://smush.it/ CSS Sprite Generator http://spritegen.websiteperformance.org/

SpriteMe http://spriteme.org/ (in progress) Hammerhead http://stevesouders.com/hammerhead/ Cuzillion http://cuzillion.com/

Performance Analyzers: HPWS rules

combine JS & CSS use CSS sprites use a CDN set Expires in the future gzip text responses put CSS at the top put JS at the bottom avoid CSS expressions make JS & CSS external reduce DNS lookups minify JS avoid redirects remove dupe scripts remove ETags YSlow Page Speed Pagetest X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X VRTA neXpert X X X X X

X X
X

X
X

Performance Analyzers: EFWS rules

YSlow Page Speed Pagetest don't block UI thread split JS payload load scripts async inline JS b4 stylesheet write efficient JS min. uncompressed size optimize images shard domains flush the document avoid iframes simplify CSS selectors X X X VRTA neXpert

X X

X X

Performance Analyzers: other rules

YSlow Page Speed Pagetest use persistent conns reduce cookies avoid net congestion increase MTU, TCP win avoid server congestion remove unused CSS specify image dims use GET for Ajax reduce DOM elements avoid 404 errors avoid Alpha filters don't scale images optimize favicon 2.0 X X X VRTA neXpert X X X X X X X X 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.0

Top 10 Performance
YSlow Page Speed
AOL ?* yellow

eBay Facebook Google Search Live Search MSN.com MySpace Wikipedia Yahoo! YouTube
* YSlow wouldn't start.

82 68 95 93 72 84 66 96 77

yellow red green green yellow yellow yellow yellow yellow

Wikipedia
combine 6 scripts, 8 stylesheets

add Expires header

minify JavaScript, save 39K (36%)

avoid inline script after stylesheet

31K (41%) unused CSS remove ETags

Yahoo!
shard l.yimg.com

46K (49%) unused CSS

~90 very inefficient CSS selectors

2 3

1 4 4

4
4

www.ebay.com

1. long HTML doc response 2. flush (good) 3. inline script blocks .js
var pageName='HomePagePortal';

4. scripts block 5. ads .js non-blocking (good) 6. 26 bg images no sprites 7. sharded domains pics & rtm (good) 8. compress images by 20% 9. thumbs load slowly HTTP/1.0? 10. remove ETags (?) 11. ~40 inefficient CSS selectors
.playgrnd * {}

6 7 8

AOL
shard portal.aolcdn.com

combine 8 scripts
simplify CSS selectors

avoid inline script after stylesheet

jQueryEnabled = true;

remove 97K (49%) unused CSS

Facebook
combine 13 scripts, 6 stylesheets

sprite 31 background images

reduce images by 106K (44%)

put stylesheets above scripts

remove 102K (50%) unused CSS

MSN.com
combine 13 scripts

sprite 26 background images

put stylesheets above scripts

avoid inline script after stylesheet

YouTube
add Expires header (can't?)

minify JavaScript, save ~29K (14%

CNet Performance Analysis

cool
flushed document HTTP/1.0 downgrade
requests: 107 load time: 3.7 secs xfer size: 436K YSlow: F (48)

opportunities
load oreo.moo.rb.combined.js async split i.i.com.com across two domains concatenate 10 scripts sprite 25 CSS background images 30 resources with short Expires 62% (62K) of CSS not used

http://www.shopping.com
slow spots:
top shard CSS and JS, flush middle shard images bottom scripts (async?)

use CSS sprites (42 bg images) add future Expires header optimize images (50K, 20%) remove ETags

takeaways
focus on the frontend

run Page Speed and YSlow

speed matters

impact on revenue
Google: +500 ms -20% traffic1

Yahoo: +400 ms -5-9% full-page traffic

Amazon: +100 ms -1% sales1

http://home.blarg.net/~glinden/StanfordDataMining.2006-11-29.ppt 2 http://www.slideshare.net/stoyan/yslow-20-presentation
1

cost savings
hardware reduced load

bandwidth reduced response size

http://billwscott.com/share/presentations/2008/stanford/HPWP-RealWorld.pdf

if you want better user experience more revenue reduced operating expenses the strategy is clear

Even Faster Web Sites

Steve Souders
souders@google.com
http://stevesouders.com/docs/velocity-20090622.ppt