On: How fast is apple.com?

[rorrr]

Ironically, Google Pagespeed tells us this about zoompf.com:

High priority

    Compressing the following resources with gzip could reduce their transfer size by 235.5KiB (72% reduction).
    Compressing http://zoompf.com/js/jquery-ui.min.js could save 142.7KiB (74% reduction).
    Compressing http://zoompf.com/js/jquery.min.js could save 62.5KiB (66% reduction).
    Compressing http://zoompf.com/wp-content/themes/NewZoompf/style.css could save 24.9KiB (77% reduction).
    Compressing http://zoompf.com/js/animations.js could save 4.0KiB (75% reduction).
    Compressing http://zoompf.com/.../wp-page-numbers.css could save 1.4KiB (73% reduction).

Medium Priority

    The following cacheable resources have a short freshness lifetime. Specify an expiration at least one week in the future for the following resources:
    http://zoompf.com/images/background_pages.png (expiration not specified)
    http://zoompf.com/images/clipboard.png (expiration not specified)
    http://zoompf.com/images/handles.png (expiration not specified)
    http://zoompf.com/images/pages.png (expiration not specified)
    http://zoompf.com/images/report.png (expiration not specified)
    http://zoompf.com/images/streak.png (expiration not specified)
    http://zoompf.com/js/animations.js (expiration not specified)
    http://zoompf.com/js/jquery-ui.min.js (expiration not specified)
    http://zoompf.com/js/jquery.min.js (expiration not specified)
    http://zoompf.com/.../wp-page-numbers.css (expiration not specified)
    http://zoompf.com/wp-content/themes/NewZoompf/style.css (expiration not specified)
    http://zoompf.com/.../freedownload.jpg (expiration not specified)
    http://zoompf.com/.../freeperformancescan.jpg (expiration not specified)
    http://zoompf.com/.../logo-disrupt.jpg (expiration not specified)
    http://zoompf.com/.../logo-virgin-america.png (expiration not specified)
    http://zoompf.com/.../social-icons-32.png (expiration not specified)
    http://zoompf.com/.../video-icon.png (expiration not specified)

They basically don't follow their own advice. Credibility -> toilet.

[stavros → rorrr]

Ah, the ole "tu quoque" fallacy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque

[vacri → stavros]

That's a subtle fallacy. It confused me at first, then I realised that 'pointing out hypocrisy' isn't the fallacy, it's 'claiming the argument is wrong because it's hypocritical' that's the fallacy.

edit: on further examination, the examples given in the wikipedia article are really bad - because they're merely pointing out hypocrisy ("but you're -foo-") rather than claiming the argument is wrong. Person 2 in each example could quite happily be in full agreement with the argument and make the same comment.

[tptacek → vacri]

Not following one's own performance advice isn't hypocrisy. Performance might just not matter as much to Zoompf.

[stavros → vacri]

Yes, exactly. Maybe I should edit the article to include this, it's an important aspect. Sure, the person might be hypocritical, but this doesn't invalidate the argument.

[bduerst → stavros]

It's like a chain smoker telling you that smoking is bad.

[stavros → bduerst]

Yep, and it is bad.

[dbushell → rorrr]

That doesn't make their advice wrong.

[rorrr → dbushell]

That however makes me skip their advice forever.

[Retric → rorrr]

That's silly. Often when giving advice on complex issues your simply providing a heuristic. Start here, there might be some edge cases involved but 95% of the time this is the way to go.

[jeaguilar → Retric]

I am ignoring your advice due to your grammatical mistake.

[Retric → jeaguilar]

I did not give advice.

[wisty → rorrr]

There site may just not be worth optimizing, as i's not as popular as apple.com

[singlow → wisty]

Most of the advice they gave was mostly affecting performance for a single user, not performance of the site for scaling to many users. Only the number of requests for javascript files actually would affect the scaling of the site and not much since they are just static files.

[rorrr → singlow]

You're confusing performance and scalability.

You can have a slow-loading site that will scale to hundreds of millions of users.

You can have a very fast site that will die under a thousand users.

[singlow → rorrr]

I didn't confuse them - I explicitly distinguished between them. Scalability is a category of performance - it is performance at scale. Most of these suggestions may help with individual browser loading - but will not make a significant difference in scalability. However, the pretense for the investigation was the high level of traffic that was imminent - a scalability challenge.

[thisisblurry → rorrr]

If you don't want to use Zoompf (even if they don't follow their own advice), you should take a look at Steve Souders' blog for web performance: http://www.stevesouders.com/blog/

He literally wrote the book on it.

[jaytaylor → thisisblurry]

Thanks for this, I hadn't seen it before and it is very informative!

[deelowe → rorrr]

Just a case of the cobbler's children having no shoes, no?