All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

Improving perldoc.perl.org load times

jj on 2009-07-22T10:39:36

Following the perldoc design update, I've now started work on various fixes and optimisations.

The first of these is page load time.

After profiling in Safari, it became apparent that a large proportion of the load time was due to latency, and that the JavaScript files were blocking the loading of images, delaying the final page render.

These issues are now fixed, and the stats for the perldoc homepage are as follows:

  • Images
    Reduced from 10 to 3
  • JavaScript files
    Reduced from 4 to 1
  • HTTP requests
    Reduced from 19 to 9 (3 of which are for Google Analytics)
  • Total download size
    Reduced from 222Kb to 165Kb

With a few extra tweaks to the object load order and placement of JavaScript files, the overall page load time should now be significantly reduced.

"(3 of which are for Google Analytics)"

educated_foo on 2009-07-23T04:21:26

That sounds like 3 unnecessary requests.

Re:"(3 of which are for Google Analytics)"

chromatic on 2009-07-23T08:55:37

Fortunately, they're easy to block at the DNS level.

Re:"(3 of which are for Google Analytics)"

educated_foo on 2009-07-23T23:58:56

Oh, they're already in my privoxy blockfile, right between fimserve and googleadservices. I just don't understand why perldoc.perl.org needs to even try.

Re:"(3 of which are for Google Analytics)"

petdance on 2009-07-29T03:40:08

I just don't understand why perldoc.perl.org needs to even try

Perhaps you could ask.

Re:"(3 of which are for Google Analytics)"

educated_foo on 2009-07-30T01:38:39

Okay... which of the features listed here

        http://www.google.com/analytics/

does it use?

Re:"(3 of which are for Google Analytics)"

petdance on 2009-07-30T01:44:52

I don't know, I'm not the one who maintains the site, or even put it together.

My point was merely that it's silly to say "I can't understand why" if you haven't tried to find out the answer.

Re:"(3 of which are for Google Analytics)"

educated_foo on 2009-07-31T00:51:01

Just like it's silly to suggest that I didn't reason about the potential user-tracking needs of an open source project's documentation site. But anyways...

Re:"(3 of which are for Google Analytics)"

petdance on 2009-07-31T14:10:30

I'm sure you did consider some ideas about why one might want to use Google Analytics.

However, there are probably reasons that you didn't consider that Joshua found important. I suggest that if you want to know what they are, that you ask him.

Re:"(3 of which are for Google Analytics)"

jj on 2009-07-30T10:11:11

One reason is for the browser and OS statistics - these tell me what platforms I need to test on.

Thank you

petdance on 2009-07-29T03:41:59

Thanks for your work on speeding things up. It sounds like you've made a big change for the better for the users.

YSlow FF plugin

leedo on 2009-07-29T04:01:11

You probably know this, but another traditional approach is to put the JS files at the end of the HTML doc. The YSlow Firebug add-on probably has some other good tips.

Thank you

vek on 2009-07-30T23:06:28

I just wanted to say thanks for the work you've put into this. JFDI at its finest. It's a thankless task and seeing some of the less than helpful replies to some of your perldoc posts here makes me shake my head. Your work is appreciated mate.