Page Speed Optimization

Speed is king not only in race cars but also in websites especially for online applications. If you have created a website that loads fast and interacts in real time with users, you will have faithful users for a very long time. On the other hand, a slow application will only frustrate users no manner how useful.

Competition will always be there and will sway users if the application is not fast enough to interact with users. This is especially true in Ajax and JavaScript based websites since the programming language is often used to create online applications.

The quest for faster websites and online applications continues with a tool called Page Speed. Developed by Google, this tool is a small add-on to Firefox browser and works with Firebug debugging tool. In gist, it’s an optimization tool that aims to help developers speed up the process of their application not just on JavaScript and other client side programming languages but also on other programming languages. It comes with various tools, although very small, that could improve the loading time of the application. Developers should be able to improve the application without changing anything on the application.

Comparing Page Speed to YSlow

Page Speed is almost the same as YSlow – Yahoo’s optimization tool. But there are a few things that made Page Speed different from YSlow which should make developers, especially on JavaScript, consider Page Speed:

• Auto minification for JavaScript – Page Speed will automatically minify JavaScript coding for a speedier process.

• Graphic identification of online process – aside from examining codes, the application will take a look at some components of the application and identify which data format is slowing down the application. This will then be shown through visual representation.

• Help with CSS problem – developers should also expect recommendation on optimizing CSS. As an integral part of many JavaScript and Ajax based application, it’s just proper that CSS would receive some support.

Focus on JavaScript

The best feature of Page Speed is based on the fact that it has focused on JavaScript which is very good news for Ajax based developers. Page Speed’s “Profile Deferrable JavaScript option” will help developer further identify which functions in the application could use lazy loading. This is very important for JavaScript as lazy loading some functions could increase the speed of the application. Instead of using active resources, some functions could actually be implemented through lazy loading.

Open Source

Like YSlow, developers of Page Speed opted to implement the Page Speed as an open source application. The reason is simple: by making Page Speed an open source application, it will automatically be adopted by other developers and could put in more functions.

Even without the original developers, the small add-on for Firefox will slowly evolve into something bigger and better. Page Speed even enjoys the attention that YSlow did not have because of the attention in developing JavaScript and Ajax is more compared to YSlow when it was launched.

Page Speed is a small but very useful tool especially for Ajax based developers. Because of its optimization tools, developers would be able to implement a better application in the shortest time possible.