High Performance Web Sites

MySpace

Figure 17-20. http://www.myspace.com

It's a challenge for web sites geared toward user-generated content to achieve fast performance—the content is varied and changes frequently. Nevertheless, there are some simple changes that would improve the response time of MySpace (http://www.myspace.com).

Rule 1: Make Fewer HTTP Requests

Combining scripts and stylesheets would reduce the number of HTTP requests. The page has six scripts, three of which are loaded close together at the top of the page and could easily be combined. The three stylesheets are also loaded close together at the top of the page, making it easy to combine them as well.

Rule 3: Add an Expires Header

The MySpace page has over a dozen images with no Expires header. Some of the images in the page understandably wouldn't benefit from an Expires header because they rotate frequently, such as in the new videos and new people sections of the page. However, some of the images that are used on every page also do not have an Expires header.

Rule 9: Reduce DNS Lookups

The impact of DNS lookups would be reduced by eliminating some of the 10 unique domains used in the page.

Rule 10: Minify JavaScript

Four scripts, totaling over 20K, are not minified.

As shown in Figure 17-21, there's a high degree of parallelized HTTP requests in the middle of the page, but the beginning of the page is negatively affected by the blocking behavior ...