Pocket Guide to Web Performance (Free Edition)

Learn why performance matters, and pick up practical techniques to make smoother pages that load faster.

Web pages are getting larger and slower to load, and we seem to be relying on browser and network improvements to rescue us. Visitors have expectations that pages should be faster. By stretching their patience, there's a danger they will spend less time on our sites, visit fewer pages and buy less.

In this book, Andy will guide you through why performance matters, what we can use to improve it, why these methods work, and some of the trade-offs involved. You'll learn practical techniques to improve website performance and be introduced to approaches that you can experiment with.

Who should read this book?

This book is aimed at web designers and developers who want to learn why and how to make sites faster.

Topics include:

Part 1: Why performance matters

Performance affects visitor engagement. In this section we'll look at the impact performance improvements have.

Part 2: Getting the basics right

So, faster is better, but what performance techniques should every site be using, and how easy are they to implement?

Part 3: Optimising images

Images typically represent 60% of the download size of the average webpage. Choosing an appropriate format and optimising it are crucial to reducing an image’s size.

Part 4: Adapting for the device

Different devices have different capabilities. Adapting the content we deliver can improve performance too.

Part 5: Staying smooth

Performance isn't just about how quickly pages load - what also matters is how smoothly they scroll and whether they stay responsive as we interact with them.