Archives
HTTP Archive: nine months
Although the HTTP Archive was announced in March, I actually started gathering data back in November of 2010. This week’s run marks nine months from that initial crawl. The trends show that performance indicators are mixed, with some critical metrics like size and redirects on the rise. [As a reminder, the HTTP Archive currently crawls […]
(lack of) Caching for iPhone Home Screen Apps
Yesterday’s post, Unexpected Reloads in WebKit, revealed an interesting behavior that affects caching in Safari: When you load the same URL back-to-back in Safari, the second load is treated the same as hitting Reload. This is bad for performance because the browser issues a Conditional GET request for each resource instead of using the cached […]
Unexpected Reloads in WebKit
People who work on web performance often need to load the same URL over and over again. Furthermore, they need to do this while simulating a real user’s empty cache experience and primed cache experience. When I want to analyze the empty cache experience the flow is simple: go to about:blank, clear the browser cache, […]
HTTP Archive: 1M URLs, Internet Archive, Sponsors
The HTTP Archive provides a permanent record of web performance information. It started in October 2010 crawling 1K URLs. This was possible thanks to Pat Meenan’s help providing access to WebPagetest. A month later we increased coverage to the world’s top ~18K URLs. That was good, but the next step is 1M URLs. Today at […]
HTTP Archive: today’s runs
I just finished processing the “May 16 2011” run for HTTP Archive and HTTP Archive Mobile. Here are some interesting observations. HTTP Archive (desktop) As of today there is six months of historical data in the HTTP Archive. As a reminder, the world’s top ~17K web pages are being crawled. Since the actual URLs in […]
HTTP Archive Mobile
This morning during my talk at Mobilism I announced the HTTP Archive Mobile – a permanent repository for mobile performance data. Ever since I announced the HTTP Archive (based on data gathered from Internet Explorer using WebPagetest) people have been asking, “What about data gathered from a mobile device?” It’s a logical next step. Thankfully, […]
HTTP Archive: Top 100, Top 1000 & compare stats
Right now the HTTP Archive analyzes the world’s top 17,000 web pages gathering information about the site’s construction. It’s interesting data, especially for a performance junkie like me. Subsetting the data for comparisons is a challenge given the numerous ways this long list of URLs could be sliced. This past week I added two new […]
HTTP Archive: servers and most 404s
I launched the HTTP Archive about a month ago. The reaction has been positive including supportive tweets from Tim O’Reilly, Werner Vogels, Robert Scoble, and John Resig. I’m also excited about the number of people that have already started contributing to the project. Two new stats charts are available thanks to patches from open source […]
HTTP Archive: max-age
There’s a long list of interesting stats to be added to the HTTP Archive. I’m planning on knocking those off at about one a week. (If someone wants to help that’d be great – contact me. Familiarity with MySQL and Google Charts API is a plus.) Last week I added an interesting stat looking at […]
HTTP Archive: URL list, Flash trends
Last week I announced the launch of the HTTP Archive. The feedback has been very positive. I’ve already heard from a handful of performance gurus who have downloaded the data and done additional analyses. This was a major goal of the project and I’m excited to see it happening. I made a few changes to […]
Announcing the HTTP Archive
I’m proud to announce the release of the HTTP Archive. From the mission statement: Successful societies and institutions recognize the need to record their history – this provides a way to review the past, find explanations for current behavior, and spot emerging trends. In 1996 Brewster Kahle realized the cultural significance of the Internet and […]
Storager case study: Bing, Google
Storager Last week I posted my mobile comparison of 11 top sites. One benefit of analyzing top websites is finding new best practices. In that survey I found that the mobile version of Bing used localStorage to reduce the size of their HTML document from ~200 kB to ~30 kB. This is a good best […]
Mobile comparison of Top 11
A few weeks ago I announced Jdrop while at Webstock. After Webstock I took some vacation time on Waiheke Island. Now that I’m back I wanted to show how Jdrop is useful for doing mobile analysis. Preamble As a reminder, Jdrop is a JSON repository in the cloud. Jdrop itself doesn’t do anything specific for […]
Jdrop – JSON in the cloud
I’m excited to announce the release of Jdrop – a JSON repository in the cloud. The motivation for Jdrop came from my recent focus on mobile and subsequent launch of bookmarklets for mobile devices (Mobile Perf and Page Resources, followed by Docsource). I like using bookmarklets because they run on all mobile browsers that support […]
Blaze.io launches WPT with mobile devices
About 30 minutes ago Blaze.io launched the Blaze Mobile Performance Tool. This is incredibly exciting. I’ve only played with it a little bit but I wanted to blog about it ASAP to make people aware. Note that the service might get overrun today and tomorrow – so be patient and come back later if you […]
Site redesign
The list of things I’m good at does not include web design. As a result, this was how my website looked for the past few years: Over the holidays I was lucky enough to get connected with Emily Matthews from NOLA Marketing who came up with a new design for stevesouders.com: Around the same time […]
Docsource mobile bookmarklet
As part of my focus on mobile performance I’ve been happily using the Mobile Perf bookmarklet. The information provided by Page Resources and DOM Monster are a great start at figuring out what’s going on in mobile web pages. Last week I wanted to examine the use of transcoders on various carrier networks. The easiest […]
bookmarklets for mobile: Mobile Perf and Page Resources
As I announced yesterday, I’m now focusing on mobile performance. Not surprisingly, I’ve laid claim to MobilePerf.com and MobilePerf.org. Right now they just redirect to my Mobile Perf home page. Step 1 is complete. So – what should we do next? I’m on my Nexus S and iPhone all the time and find surfing the […]
Announcing my focus on mobile
For over a year I’ve been saying that I want to focus 100% of my time on mobile performance. I’m finally there. It might not be literally 100% of my time, but I hope to spend most of my research cycles investigating mobile. My approach to building a practice around mobile performance will follow a […]
2010 State of Performance
I wrote today’s post on the Performance Calendar titled “2010 State of Performance”. Here’s the concluding paragraph: The highlights of 2010 for me were the emergence of WPO as an industry, establishment of the W3C Web Performance Working Group, strength of open source tools, adoption of the HAR format, and increased awareness of the impact […]