Home » Archives for 2004

Crop Images Contextually – image cropping techniques optimized jpeg gif & png graphics

Cropping and resizing your images for the Web is a common technique for creating smaller thumbnail images that download quickly. However, we’ve seen many sites that either use HTML’s width and height attributes to resize larger images, or minimally crop and resize their images to lose vital information (see Figure 1). A better way to create images optimized for the Web is to crop them contextually.

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Refactor to Improve Code Design – software refactoring code to speed up javascript, java, and flash execution, download speed and coding changes

Refactoring is the art of reworking your code into a more simplified or efficient form in a disciplined way. Refactoring improves internal code structure without altering its external functionality by transforming functions and rethinking algorithms. Consequently, refactoring is an iterative process. By refactoring your JavaScript, Flash, and Java you can streamline its size, simplify your code, and speed up download and execution speed.

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Sink the Splash Pages – improve bailout rates, credibility, and rankings by removing splash page screen

Splash pages are branding or branching pages that usually appear before the main home page of a site. Many splash screens are graphically rich to entice users to explore the site. Unfortunately, splash pages decrease credibility, traffic, search engine rankings, and web site performance. This article explores the effects of splash pages and offers some solutions to lessen the pain.

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Use Server Cache Control to Improve Performance – apache web server settings for optimized caching with configuration files

Caching is the temporary storage of frequently accessed data in higher speed media (typically SRAM or RAM) for more efficient retrieval. Web caching stores frequently used objects closer to the client through browser, proxy, or server caches. By storing “fresh” objects closer to your users, you avoid round trips to the origin server, reducing bandwidth consumption, server load, and most importantly, latency. This article shows how to configure your Apache server for more efficient caching to save bandwidth and improve performance.

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Cut the Comments

Computer classes teach “structured programming” with well-commented code as one requirement of good programming practice. However, easily understood code doesn’t make for fast downloads on the Web. By cutting your comments you can shrink your XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript to download faster.

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