Speedy Gonzales

[Brightonmike]

I optimised a site I developed for speed as it’s responsive (not quite finished).

With some help from W3 Total Cache, I have reduced loading times from 4-7 seconds to staggering 839ms, with a PS score of 92.

http://fpt.pingdom.com/#!/Eo54oxWW5/http://jetbookingdirect.com/

W3 Total Cache is frankly amazing, and an absolute must! However I’ve also found that relying on it isn’t wise, coding from the off to be fast is the best way. I did this by using as few images as possible, and using CSS3 effects instead of images.

The downside is it doesn’t quite look as good in IE8 and below, but IE8 usage is declining, fast, and makes up 20% of our traffic compared to 40% last year.

[aoeui]

I use for speed testing

Yslow
GooglePageSpeed
PingdomTools

out of curiosity I tested my personal web
http://krsiak.cz/

Pingdom results
http://minus.com/mGAcR9f66

and yes
minimising number of images to jsut REALLY necessary + using CSS3 is way w all should bear in mind and keep doing it

[aoeui]

I do not use CDN
even though I will try to hit the bellow 2 seconds bar for all my pages :)

[standuncan]

I use CSS3 as often as possible, but for older IE I have my separate stylesheet with images as replacements tot he CSS3. It may load slower for those users, but they still get a pleasurable viewing experience. And if you compress and save your images correctly (quality vs compression) usually they aren’t that large in file size.

[TheDoc]

Fun fact: ‘Speedy Gonzales’ is what I named my main SSD drive.

…carry on…

[Author]

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