High Performance Web Sites: Essential Knowledge for Front-End Engineers: Souders, Steve: 9780596529307: Amazon.com: Books

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Want your web site to display more quickly? This book presents 14 specific rules that will cut 25% to 50% off response time when users request a page. Author Steve Souders, in his job as Chief Performance Yahoo!, collected these best practices while optimizing some of the most-visited pages on the Web. Even sites that had already been highly optimized, such as Yahoo! Search and the Yahoo! Front Page, were able to benefit from these surprisingly simple performance guidelines.

The rules in High Performance Web Sites explain how you can optimize the performance of the Ajax, CSS, JavaScript, Flash, and images that you've already built into your site -- adjustments that are critical for any rich web application. Other sources of information pay a lot of attention to tuning web servers, databases, and hardware, but the bulk of display time is taken up on the browser side and by the communication between server and browser. High Performance Web Sites covers every aspect of that process.

Each performance rule is supported by specific examples, and code snippets are available on the book's companion web site. The rules include how to:

Make Fewer HTTP Requests
Use a Content Delivery Network
Add an Expires Header
Gzip Components
Put Stylesheets at the Top
Put Scripts at the Bottom
Avoid CSS Expressions
Make JavaScript and CSS External
Reduce DNS Lookups
Minify JavaScript
Avoid Redirects
Remove Duplicates Scripts
Configure ETags
Make Ajax Cacheable
If you're building pages for high traffic destinations and want to optimize the experience of users visiting your site, this book is indispensable.
"If everyone would implement just 20% of Steve's guidelines, the Web would be a dramatically better place. Between this book and Steve's YSlow extension, there's really no excuse for having a sluggish web site anymore."
-Joe Hewitt, Developer of Firebug debugger and Mozilla's DOM Inspector
"Steve Souders has done a fantastic job of distilling a massive, semi-arcane art down to a set of concise, actionable, pragmatic engineering steps that will change the world of web performance."
-Eric Lawrence, Developer of the Fiddler Web Debugger, Microsoft Corporation

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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Steve Souders works at Google on web performance and open source initiatives. His books High Performance Web Sites and Even Faster Web Sites explain his best practices for performance along with the research and real-world results behind them. Steve is the creator of YSlow, the performance analysis extension to Firebug with more than 1 million downloads. He serves as co-chair of Velocity, the web performance and operations conference sponsored by O'Reilly. Steve taught CS193H: High Performance Web Sites at Stanford, and he frequently speaks at such conferences as OSCON, Rich Web Experience, Web 2.0 Expo, and The Ajax Experience.

Steve previously worked at Yahoo! as the Chief Performance Yahoo!, where he blogged about web performance on Yahoo! Developer Network. He was named a Yahoo! Superstar. Steve worked on many of the platforms and products within the company, including running the development team for My Yahoo!. Prior to Yahoo! Steve worked at several small to mid-sized startups including two companies he co-founded, Helix Systems and CoolSync. He also worked at General Magic, WhoWhere?, and Lycos.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ O'Reilly Media
Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 16, 2007
Edition ‏ : ‎ 1st
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Print length ‏ : ‎ 168 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0596529309
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0596529307
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7 x 0.43 x 9.19 inches
Best Sellers Rank: #768,440 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #22 in Computer Performance Optimization
- #826 in Software Development (Books)
- #1,023 in Internet & Telecommunications
Customer Reviews:
111 ratings

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Steve Souders

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Steve Souders works at Google on web performance and open source initiatives. His books High Performance Web Sites and Even Faster Web Sites explain his best practices for performance along with the research and real-world results behind them. Steve is the creator of YSlow, the performance analysis extension to Firebug with more than 1 million downloads. He serves as co-chair of Velocity, the web performance and operations conference sponsored by O'Reilly. Steve taught CS193H: High Performance Web Sites at Stanford, and he frequently speaks at such conferences as OSCON, Rich Web Experience, Web 2.0 Expo, and The Ajax Experience.

Steve previously worked at Yahoo! as the Chief Performance Yahoo!, where he blogged about web performance on Yahoo! Developer Network. He was named a Yahoo! Superstar. Steve worked on many of the platforms and products within the company, including running the development team for My Yahoo!. Prior to Yahoo! Steve worked at several small to mid-sized startups including two companies he co-founded, Helix Systems and CoolSync. He also worked at General Magic, WhoWhere?, and Lycos.

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Customers find the book helpful for web development, with one noting how complex concepts are explained in simple terms. The book serves as a great checklist for web developers and helps improve site performance, with one customer reporting a 25% speed improvement. However, several customers mention that the content feels outdated.

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Readability Performance Dated content

21 customers mention "Readability"21 positive0 negative

Customers find the book readable and helpful, appreciating its valuable information and great checklist for web developers. One customer notes that complex concepts are explained in simple terms.

"...In this book, Steve Souders documents the best practices for optimizing your front-end experience, which can often yield significant improvements..." Read more

"In High Performance Web Sites: Essential Knowledge for Front-End Engineers Steve Souders explains that at least 80 percent of the time it takes to..." Read more

"...This book is a brief guide to many of the things to avoid when designing a site. Poor web site performance is not just http trips...." Read more

"While the information in the book is good information to know, it is (as others have said) information that pretty much gave a "yeah, I knew that"..." Read more

9 customers mention "Performance"9 positive0 negative

Customers praise the book's performance guidance, with one customer reporting a 25% improvement in site speed and another noting increased visitor satisfaction.

"In High Performance Web Sites: Essential Knowledge for Front-End Engineers Steve Souders explains that at least 80 percent of the time it takes to..." Read more

"...Following the steps in this short book will measurably improve your site's performance with a minimum of effort...." Read more

"It helped me grasp the concepts of optimizing performance for websites! Very helpful read for someone new to the field of performance testing!" Read more

"Excellent work on performance. This book sets the baseline. I consider this a must read...." Read more

3 customers mention "Dated content"0 positive3 negative

Customers find the book's content outdated.

"the book felt a little outdated, while the information in the book is very valuable I already knew a large portion of it, so if you are already an..." Read more

"Good yet dated, still it's valid for everything that is served using HTTP/1.1" Read more

"This is a very thought provoking book. It's very dated now, but the principles are still largely true, HTML 2.0 notwithstanding." Read more

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Ilya Grigorik
Optimizing the front-end experience
Reviewed in the United States on May 26, 2008
Verified Purchase

When conversation turns to performance, we often focus on the database, application servers, or a multitude of other backend processes, and completely forget about the front-end: CSS, JavaScript, filesizes, conditional requests, and request pipelining. In this book, Steve Souders documents the best practices for optimizing your front-end experience, which can often yield significant improvements with minimal code changes.

The detailed examples and associated discussions yield a lot of very useful tips - you'll definitely want to have this book near you. Likewise, the examples of dissecting the 10 most popular websites at the end of the book are very helpful, as they highlight the method, and also show how these practices have been adopted by different organizations.

Only word of forewarning: if you've read the YSlow documentation, then you won't find all that much new content in this book. Corollary: you can read the YSlow documentation to get many of the same tips and best practices, for free.

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4 people found this helpful

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Joseph S. Strazzere
A Great Checklist For The Web Developer
Reviewed in the United States on October 10, 2009
Verified Purchase
In High Performance Web Sites: Essential Knowledge for Front-End Engineers Steve Souders explains that at least 80 percent of the time it takes to display a web page happens after the HTML document has been downloaded, and describes the importance of the techniques in this book.

The book is a quick read containing some good hints and tips. Many are fairly easily investigated and implemented in most companies.

Seemingly out of place, however, is Rule 2: Use a Content Delivery Network. While it's certainly a good way to improve performance, it's not something every company can afford.

Overall, an interesting book.

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J. Crowe
An Essential Performance Book
Reviewed in the United States on June 2, 2014
Verified Purchase
I am new to the web site design world and have purchased a number of books that give good advise about designing for SEO and good navigation of a site. Still I wondered why some sites never seemed to load quickly. This book is a brief guide to many of the things to avoid when designing a site. Poor web site performance is not just http trips. The number of really bad web sites is amazing and this book may help front-end engineers point the way for the back-end designers too.

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D. Stein
Expert-in-a-book
Reviewed in the United States on January 21, 2008
Verified Purchase
When optimizing a website, a lot of focus is usually placed on the back-end (databases, server-side code, etc.). That's because most programmers are comfortable with such matters. Once the HTML is emitted, it's easy to think "not my problem".

This book, however, is written by someone (a Yahoo engineer) who knows the front end (how the emitted HTML performs for the user) *is* often the biggest problem.

Instead of vague generalities, you'll find precise prescriptions (14, in fact) that when applied will make your site faster. The prescriptions are well-supported with both the *reasons* as well as examples of live URLs with and without the rules applied.

This book should be required reading for your whole engineering team. If you ran a series of brown-bag lunches and applied 1 rule per week, at the end of a calendar quarter you'd have a much snappier web site.

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NJP (Ohio)
I expected more...
Reviewed in the United States on January 10, 2008
Verified Purchase
While the information in the book is good information to know, it is (as others have said) information that pretty much gave a "yeah, I knew that" type of impression. And at only 137 pages of text, it's a very light read. If you are a new web developer, this is a nice collection of tips. As an experienced developer, there's nothing new here. And at $29 for its minimal 137 pages, it's really just an expensive checklist of 14 simple items. Too pricey for what you get in my opinion.

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Shadi
the book felt a little outdated, while the information ...
Reviewed in the United States on October 4, 2015
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the book felt a little outdated, while the information in the book is very valuable I already knew a large portion of it, so if you are already an experienced web developer then don't expect much of this book, there is a newer version of the book called even faster websites I'm looking forward to get.

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Eric Lawrence
Highly Recommended
Reviewed in the United States on September 30, 2007
Verified Purchase
Everyone prefers faster websites. Following the steps in this short book will measurably improve your site's performance with a minimum of effort.

If you're running a small site, the simple steps in this book might take you an afternoon to implement, and speed your site's performance by 25% or more.

For a major site, implementing the best practices might take you a few days, and save you thousands of dollars a month in bandwidth. Following the guidance that Steve lays out in this book has saved my company over $10,000 a month in bandwidth bills alone, and visitor satisfaction soared along with the site performance.

Highly recommended.

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C. Miller
Should have been free
Reviewed in the United States on November 30, 2007
Verified Purchase
Not much that you probably don't already know or couldn't find on the web for free. Worth A read I guess but I definitely wouldn't buy it again.

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Sanjeev
Strongly Advice for all Beginners
Reviewed in India on September 27, 2021
Verified Purchase

This book is packed with details. The performance he suggests is more than enough to speed up your website. If you keep optimizing your site based on what the book says, you will actually learn more and discover new things that you never knew.

Highly recommended.

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A. Batllo
Concise, authoritative, packed with useful advice
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 4, 2008
Verified Purchase
For once, it's nice to have an dev book not full of useless screenshots and blatitudes going beyond 500 pages. This little gem is a delightful stroll through a field I see ignored in most projects too often.

While the authors does not say everthing there is to say about web site optimization, the advice here will be more than enough to out do competitors, to set you a level or two above fellow developers and to show some light on issues that you will probably never find out for yourself unless you do a lot of testing, which you never have time to do, considering the strict deadlines imposed on most projects. Fortunately, Steve Souders has already done this for us.

I love the concept of just doing 14 chapters, each for a given solution, explanining it concisely, giving real world metrics and sticking to the point. Good also that he shows how he did the tests and how he analysis top web sites.

To sum it up, I think this should be a must not only for the front-end engineers, as the book suggests, but also for any developer having to do with the web (asp.net, php, whatever) and architects, project leads, whatever. The book is short and plain, so you have no excuse. It will benefit you no matter what.

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Jerome
Une référence
Reviewed in France on January 12, 2008
Verified Purchase
Si vous développez sur le web, achetez vite ce livre !
Pourquoi ?...
D'abord pour son auteur Steve Souders, qui après avoir été responsable chez Yahoo! de la performance des sites, il vient tout juste (7 janvier 08) de débuter chez un autre géant : Google. Steve est à l'origine de YSlow un outil (pour Firefox) d'analyse de performance des pages web.
Ensuite, cet ouvrage (sur le modèle de YSlow), vous propose des recommandations sur 13 points pour optimiser le chargement des pages web.
Bien évidemment, l'avantage à tirer de ces recommandations dépend du trafic du ou des sites que vous gérez. Mais, si vous êtes curieux et que vous vous intéressez au web, allez-y sans hésiter.
L'ouvrage est facile à lire, mais est surtout utile comme ouvrage de référence à garder sous la main en permanence.

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Abdullah Rubiyath
You can't go wrong with this book!
Reviewed in Canada on August 1, 2012
Verified Purchase
If you are into front-end development, then this book is a good resource. This book explains how to improve your site performance (loading time) significantly. I bought this book back in 2009 and learned a lot from it. Although if you use framework, most of these optimization can be done from the framework, but I still think this book is a good read if you are into front-end development.

Also, all of the points covered in the book is mentioned in Yahoo Developer Network's Performance blog.[...]

There's also a youtube video titled "High Performance Websites and YSlow!" which explains these points in details.

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Richard Krasowski
Perfektes Buch für Frontendler
Reviewed in Germany on February 21, 2018
Verified Purchase
Das Buch beschreibt viele Eigenschaften, auf die es bei der Webperformance ankommt. Z.B. wo müssen javascript Dateien geladen werden? Am Anfang oder am Ende eines Html Dokuments? oder ähnliches... Ein tolles Basisbuch für Webentwickler.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Strongly Advice for all Beginners

5.0 out of 5 stars Concise, authoritative, packed with useful advice

5.0 out of 5 stars Une référence

5.0 out of 5 stars You can't go wrong with this book!

5.0 out of 5 stars Perfektes Buch für Frontendler

Strongly Advice for all Beginners

Concise, authoritative, packed with useful advice

Une référence

You can't go wrong with this book!

Perfektes Buch für Frontendler