Rob Larsen

Any YSLow users out there? If so, can anyone point out a major site with a worse performance grade than either

MSNBC or CNN?. Both scored a wonderful 26!

The number of HTTP requests at CNN is just silly and the overall size is completely out of control:

Empty Cache Primed Cache
18.1K 1 HTML/text
0.0K 5 undefineds
24.1K 13 IFrame/Frames
1.1K 2 XMLHttpRequests
31.0K 2 Flash Objects
326.1K 23 JavaScript Files
520.8K 6 Stylesheet Files
3.2K 45 CSS Images
142.7K 89 Images
1067.4K Total size
186 HTTP requests

MSNB isn't far behind:

195.0K 5 HTML/texts
0.0K 3 undefineds
3.8K 1 IFrame/Frame
66.2K 3 Flash Objects
240.8K 28 JavaScript Files
52.9K 4 Stylesheet Files
21.2K 59 CSS Images
220.2K 81 Images
800.4K Total size
184 HTTP requests

[update]
We now have a new winner. Click through to see who gets an extra fancy 21

I finally got around to compressing this site's JavaScript file last night. I used /packer/ because I know that it supports conditional compilation. I'm a fan of conditional compilation.

It was funny because there were a couple of lines missing semi-colons that I must have looked at a thousand times before last night and just never noticed that they were nekkid like that. JSLint helped me out a lot with making sure the file was ready for packing.

Anyway, between gzipping and compressing it my JS file screams out to the browser at a tidy 2.67 KB (down from an unadulterated 9.41 KB.) There are probably functions in some libraries larger than that…

Go small or go home!

If you're using Flash and you want the best possible coverage (meaning it works with users who don't have JS turned on) while still using something like SWFObject where possible to get around the "click here to activate and use this control" ActiveX message in Internet Explorer, then take a look at the ridiculous pattern below.

Warning- not for the squeamish…
(more…)

drunkenfist.com ranks 105,631 with Quantcast

Interestingly, they also provide demographic information:

"This site reaches approximately 14,368 U.S. monthly uniques. The site attracts a more African American, more affluent, slightly more male than female, teen and young adult audience."

Compete ranks me 92,116 with 15,802 US visitors.

Those numbers, at least in terms of visitors, are reasonably close to my actual numbers (according to Google Analytics.)

So why does Alexa rank me 525,696 (290,588 latest. But the above numbers are for May anyway and my traffic has increased since)? What are the other two sites doing that Alexa isn't? Is it something to do with the demographics of the Alexa user?

With Pingdom Tools: Full Page Test

"The Full Page Test loads a complete HTML page including all objects (images, CSS, JavaScripts, RSS, Flash and frames/iframes). It mimics the way a page is loaded in a web browser.

The load time of all objects is shown visually with time bars.

You can view the list of objects either in load order or as a hierarchy. The hierarchy view allows you to see which objects are linked to in for example a CSS file.

Every test also shows general statistics about the loaded page such as the total number of objects, total load time, and size including all objects.

Note: This version doesn't load objects included in JavaScripts. We have also put a limit on the number and size of the objects that are loaded (to prevent the tool from downloading movies, for example)."