Google To Promote Web Speed On New Dev Site

CWmike writes "Google has created a Web site for developers that is focused exclusively on making Web applications, sites and browsers faster. The site will allow developers to submit ideas, suggestions and questions via a discussion forum and by using Google's Moderator tool. Google hopes developers will join it in improving core online technologies such as HTML and TCP/IP. For Google, a prime example of how Web performance can be enhanced is the development of HTML 5, which provides a major improvement in how Web applications process Javascript, Google believes. 'We're hoping the community will spend some time on the basic protocols of the Internet,' Google product manager Richard Rabbat said. 'There's quite a bit of optimization that can be done [in that area].'"

Comments

external resources in HTML pages

[reed]

The number one slowdown I see on pages is linking to all kinds of external resources: images, flash movies, iframes, CSS, bits of javascript. Each of these requires at least another DNS lookup and a new HTTP connection, and often those external servers take a really long time to respond (because they're busy doing the same for all those other websites using them). Why is this going on in each users browser? It should all be done behind the scenes on the web server. Why would you put the basic user experience of your users or customers in the hands of random partners who are also doing the same for competing sites? It takes some load off your server, but I think the real reason that people just link in external resources as images, objects, etc is just that it's easier than implementing it in the back end. If you really want to offload work, then design a mechanism that addresses that need specifically.

We've ended up with a broken idea of what a web server is. Because it was the easiest way to get started, we now seem to be stuck with the basic idea that a web server is something that maps request URLs directly to files on the server's hard disk that are either returned as is or executed as scripts. This needs to change (and it is a little bit, as those "CGI scripts" have now evolved into scripts which are using real web app frameworks.)

Re:Why Do They Ignore Their Own Advice?

[quanticle]

The problem with gzip compression (in this case) is that its not lossy. All of the "unnecessary" things that you have (e.g. the unneeded closing tags on some elements) will still be there when you decompress the transmitted data. I think the grandparent wants a compression algorithm that's "intelligently lossy"; in other words, smart enough to strip off all the unneeded data (comments, extra tags, etc.) and then gzip the result for additional savings.