Online education portals like Udacity and Coursera are really changing the world of remote learning in significant ways. By making free and high quality education accessible to a global audience, these platforms are opening up undreamt of possibilities for communities around the world to improve, grow, and prosper in the digital economy of the 21st century. Education at top tier colleges and universities has traditionally been a social and economic privilege, but now anyone can join in the learning revolution by sitting in virtual classrooms with the world’s best and brightest educators. Whether this involves learning how to code and build smart phone apps, or starting up a new business, or learning about public health literacy, the sky is the limit of what’s now possible.

Everything about Web and Network Monitoring

This Week in Client-Side Performance

website performanceThis Week in Client-Side Performance is a weekly feature on the Monitor.Us blog. It summarizes recent web postings about client-side performance.Due to popular demand, This Week in JavaScript Performance has been expanded and split into two weekly articles. This Week in Client-Side Performance deals with the client side of the performance issue (HTML, DOM, CSS, JavaScript, etc.) and This Week in Server-Side Performance deals with all other performance issues (e.g., PHP, MySql, Apache, HTTP, networking, etc.).


The 3 White Lies Behind Instagram’s Lightning Speed

Author: MarkWilson.  Publisher: Fast Company.This article describes three techniques that leverage the perception-is-realityreality by telling us to lie to the end user:

  • Tell the user you’re done fulfilling his request when you’ve only just started.
  • Load the probably-most-interesting-to-the-user content first. Leave the probably-less-interesting content ’til later.
  • Download content that the user is likely to request before he requests it.

The comments provide a couple of criticisms worth thinking about. Not mentioned is the what happens if the webapp or mobile app dies before your’re done concern. If that results in an incomplete job when you told the user it was complete, your lie will be found out.


Fix the Document Object Model (DOM) for performance

Author: Warren Gaebel.  Publisher: Monitor.Us.This article suggests that the Document Object Model needs to be replaced rather than fixed. It offers questions, but no solutions.


Browser innovation and the 14 rules for faster loading websites: Revisiting Steve’s work (part 1)

Author: Joshua Bixby.  Publisher: Web Performance Today.Steve Souders published his 14 rules for website performance five years ago. Are modern browsers and web pages so different that the rules are no longer effective? This article reports on some quick tests that show how valid five of the rules are today.


Compiling JavaScript for Performance

Author: Warren Gaebel.  Publisher: Monitor.Us.This article suggests that JavaScript should be compiled rather than interpreted.


Averages, Web Performance Data, And How Your Analytics Product Is Lying To You

Author: Josh Fraser.  Publisher: HighScalability.com.This article advocates the use of Real User Measurement (RUM) to get a better picture of what your user are actually experiencing. Metrics created on other machines may not be indicative of your users’ realities.


10 JavaScript performance tips

Author: zhirayr.  Publisher: Monitor.Us.This article presents ten performance tips for JavaScript developers.


Vote Now for Your Favorite Client-side Web Performance Tips

Author: Warren Gaebel.  Publisher: Monitor.Us.This Survey Monkey questionnaire invites techies to vote for the client-side performance tips that their experience has shown to be the most useful. This is the first questionnaire in a series.


Working with files in JavaScript, Part 4: Object URLs

Author: Nicholas C. Zakas.This article is #4 in a series about working with client-side files. It shows how to embed an image from a client-side file into a web page.


Now available: Maintainable JavaScript

Author: Nicholas C. Zakas.Nicholas Zakas announces the availability of his new book: Maintainable JavaScript.
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About Warren Gaebel

Warren wrote his first computer program in 1970 (yes, it was Fortran).  He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Waterloo and his Bachelor of Computer Science degree at the University of Windsor.  After a few years at IBM, he worked on a Master of Mathematics (Computer Science) degree at the University of Waterloo.  He decided to stay home to take care of his newborn son rather than complete that degree.  That decision cost him his career, but he would gladly make the same decision again. Warren is now retired, but he finds it hard to do nothing, so he writes web performance articles for the Monitor.Us blog.  Life is good!