Reviews for High Performance Web Sites: Essential Knowledge for Front-End Engineers

1. Great tips if you are serious about web development.

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, September 12th, 2009

   This is a great little book that contains pretty much everything you need to know about optimising your website for speed. Some of the tricks outlined here have been widely known and publicised for some time. For instance, CSS sprites are not exactly the best kept secret on the web. However, there is a great deal of "new material" here which easily justifies the asking price. Best of all, it was written by somebody working in the industry working for one of the big cheeses, so they know what they are talking about and have the quantitative analysis to back up their statements.
   
   Read this book and your sites will run faster. Simple.
   
   As an added incentive, if you are having problems convincing the bean counters in your company to pay for better hosting solutions, then this book will provide you with plenty of ammo.

2. Essential Reading for Web Systems Managers & Engineers

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, August 12th, 2009

   I work full time in the field of website delivery performance, and spend much of my time examining commercial websites of large and small companies for issues hindering their performance in the browser. There are a select few people out there who have their sites well designed and optimised (perhaps they have already read this book?). However, for every one of these there are at least nine who have left considerations about page loading times to one side and let their web developers have full reign to implement the functional design driven primarily by the creatives with little if any heed paid to how this might perform in a browser at the end of an unreliable Internet connection, perhaps half way around the globe. This is fine by me, as it leaves a lot of scope for me to provide services which give instant improvements and shore up their poor design. However, if you really want to give the best possible user experience, you need to start with the fundamentals, before you start turning to third parties for help. This short, but incredibly useful book covers all you need to know about designing your website to load as swiftly as possible in the browser for a given page design, and its contents are nuggets of pure gold. If you design, develop or manage websites and you haven't read this book, you really are missing a very big trick indeed. Buy it. Read it. Do it!

3. Concise, authoritative, packed with useful advice

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, November 12th, 2008

   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.

4. High Performance Web Sites

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, October 12th, 2008

   I remember when I first started using the Internet. Dial ups were extremely slow at the time, so I'd type in a URL, then go make a sandwich. By the time I came back, hopefully the page would be loaded.
   
   Today, we expect more. Often if a page takes more than a few moments to load, I don't bother. I tend to equate professional with quick. If a site doesn't load quickly or if parts of the page are slow, I naturally assume that the information provided might be as shabbily compiled. I simply move onto a different page.
   
   High Performance Web Sites looks at how we can make our own websites load more quickly. I was surprised at how many different little things that can be done beyond optimizing graphics. Most of these things only take a few little nips and tucks and none were beyond my novice level of ability.

5. Wow. What a great book.

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, November 12th, 2007

   Wow. What a great book.
   
   I took this book, because it is very short, just 168 pages. I asked myself, what this guy can say in just 168 pages about performance? Maybe some introduction to the topic? First two chapters just confirmed my assumptions. There is nothing new, just some general information that I already knew.
   
   How big was my surprise when I finished chapter 3 - first rule (out of 14). Author was able to explain what is the problem with too many http requests and how to make fewer requests. Even I am not a performance guru (just a developer) it was clear enough how should I build my web pages in the future. Even more, he gave me a felling that I should change my current pages.
   
   Next couple chapters are even better, especially description how important is to put css and js imports in the correct place on web page, and how big impact they might have when they are in wrong place. The chapters about Expiry headers and ETags are also awesome. Author describes how cache in web browser works, what are conditional gets and how to make a proxy more efficient.
   
   I finished a book with a feeling that I can easily change my pages to work much faster than they are today. And you know what - I will not spend much time for that one.
   
   I recommend this book for everybody who writes web pages even for personal use. You will be surprised how big amount of knowledge you can get from 168 pages.