Front end optimization
-Abhishek Anand
Web Engineering,
Digital Centre of Excellence,
HCL Technologies

Why should we optimize frontend?
 80% of the end-user response time is spent on the front-end.
 Frontend optimization can cut off 25% to 50% of the page load time.
 Page load times are important. Amazon insiders estimate that every 100 ms increase in
latency costs Amazon roughly %1 of profit.
 Visitors hate slow sites, so don't make them wait.

Tools
 Yslow
 Google page speed
 Firebug

When to start frontend optimization?
 Right from the start of a project
 Image optimization and creating sprites for image.

Image optimization
 Progressive JPEG for large images with multiple colors, for anything with complex
gradients (e.g., a photo).
 PNG if you need transparency, for small and simple image (e.g., icons)
 Don't Scale Images in HTML

Minimize HTTP Requests
 Combine CSS & JS into as few files as possible.
 /admin/settings/performance -“Optimize CSS files” and “Optimize JS files” from performance
page:
 Create sprite images for background Images.
 use the CSS background-image and background-position properties to display the desired
image segment.

Minimize HTTP Requests
 Inline images use the data: URL scheme to embed the image data in the actual page
 http://drupal.org/project/css_emimage
 Avoid Redirects
 Use GET for AJAX Requests

Reduce Payload size
 Minify JavaScript and CSS
 Minifying HTML is useless!
 Remove Duplicate Scripts
 Make Ajax Cacheable
 Flush the Buffer Early. (Not very useful in drupal)
 Reduce the Number of DOM Elements

Progressive Page Loading
 Move <?php print $scripts; ?> to the bottom, of the template file. right above: <?php print
$closure; ?>.
If a module is printing its own JS in the
head: find “drupal_add_js” in that module
directory and change it’s scope to “footer”.
Do not use inline script.This breaks some
JavaScripts!

CSS Cleanup
 you can strip it out by finding/adding this function in your themes template.php file:
phptemplate_preprocess_page
 Use Google page speed to find unused CSS files

Split Components Across Domains
 Use CDN
 http://drupal.org/project/cdn
 Most browsers only download two resources from one domain at a time (only one at a
time for JS).
 Spreading static resources (like images, CSS, and JS) across couple of sub-domains will
allow browsers to download things, 2 at a time, from each domain simultaneously.

Setting up cookie domain
 A domain that sets a cookie is considered a “cookie enabled domain” by whatever
requests it.
 Disable cookies on static domains.
 In settings.php uncomment this line and put your domain in like this:
$cookie_domain = ‘example.com';

Expires Header
 LoadModule expires_module modules/mod_expires.so
Gzip Components
 LoadModule expires_module
modules/mod_expires.so
Configure E-tags
 FileETag MTime Size

Avoid CSS Expressions
 CSS expressions are a powerful (but dangerous) way to set CSS properties dynamically
 background-color: expression( (new Date()).getHours()%2 ? "#B8D4FF" : "#F08A00" );

Reduce DNS Lookups
 DNS has a cost. It typically takes 20-120 milliseconds for DNS to lookup the IP address
for a given hostname

No 404s
 HTTP requests are expensive so making an HTTP request and getting a useless
response (i.e. 404 Not Found) is totally unnecessary and will slow down the user
experience without any benefit.
 Avoid Empty Image src

Avoid Filters
 The IE-proprietary AlphaImageLoader filter aims to fix a problem with semi-transparent
true color PNGs in IE versions < 7. The problem with this filter is that it blocks rendering
and freezes the browser while the image is being downloaded. It also increases memory
consumption and is applied per element, not per image, so the problem is multiplied

Post-load Components
 Splitting JavaScript before and after the onload event.
 Fetching contents in second scroll by Ajax.
 http://www.infinite-scroll.com/

Preload Components
 Unconditional preload - as soon as onload fires, you go ahead and fetch some extra
components.
 Conditional preload - based on a user action you make a guess where the user is headed
next and preload accordingly.
 Anticipated preload - preload in advance before launching a redesign.

Thank You!
Thank You!
Questions?
Questions?
Comments?
Comments?