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Web Performance in Action: Building Fast Web Pages
SummaryWeb Performance in Action is your companion guide to making websites faster. You'll learn techniques that speed the delivery of your site's assets to the user, increase rendering speed, decrease the overall footprint of your site, as well as how to build a workflow that automates common optimization techniques. Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications.About the TechnologyNifty features, hip design, and clever marketing are great, but your website will flop if visitors think it's slow. Network conditions can be unpredictable, and with today's sites being bigger than ever, you need to set yourself apart from the competition by focusing on speed. Achieving a high level of performance is a combination of front-end architecture choices, best practices, and some clever sleight-of-hand. This book will demystify all these topics for you.About the BookWeb Performance in Action is your guide to making fast websites. Packed with "Aha!" moments and critical details, this book teaches you how to create performant websites the right way. You'll master optimal rendering techniques, tips for decreasing your site's footprint, and technologies like HTTP/2 that take your website's speed from merely adequate to seriously fast. Along the way, you'll learn how to create an automated workflow to accomplish common optimization tasks and speed up development in the process. What's InsideFoolproof performance-boosting techniquesOptimizing images and fontsHTTP/2 and how it affects your optimization workflowAbout the ReaderThis book assumes that you're familiar with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Many examples make use of Git and Node.js.About the AuthorJeremy Wagner is a professional front-end web developer with over ten years of experience. Foreword by Ethan Marcotte.Table of ContentsUnderstanding web performanceUsing assessment toolsOptimizing CSSUnderstanding critical CSSMaking images responsiveGoing further with imagesFaster fontsKeeping JavaScript lean and fastBoosting performance with service workersFine-tuning asset deliveryLooking to the future with HTTP/2Automating optimization with gulp
650 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 22, 2016
7 people are currently reading
107 people want to read
About the author
Jeremy Wagner
15 books71 followers“RABID HEART maintains a sharp, persistently moving narrative…an endlessly entertaining zombie tale that checks off genre conventions with style.”
— Kirkus Reviews
"RABID HEART evokes a mix of Misfits lyrics and grainy VHS horror classics. The plot draws parallels to Cormac McCarthy's The Road..."
— Publishers Weekly Author Spotlight
"Zombies and the end of days don't stand a chance against true love. Jeremy Wagner's RABID HEART is good, clean apocalyptic fun."
— Alma Katsu, author of The Hunger
"RABID HEART. This book is sick and sweet, and I say that with respect!"
— Peter Blauner, NY Times bestselling author of The Intruder and Sunrise Highway
"RABID HEART is Wagner’s finest work to date. Exciting and near-addictive. A page-turner that avid horror aficionados will be drawn to with glee.”
— Dead Rhetoric Magazine
“RABID HEART is a next level opus that raises the stakes considerably. And good goddamn, is it a white-knuckle thrill ride.”
— Decibel Magazine
"Wagner debuts with a highly entertaining blend…of heavy metal and hardcore horror…
Electrified by breakneck pacing, a cast of over-the-top characters and memorable lines...this thriller neatly exploits the considerable shared fanbase of apocalyptic fiction and Apocalyptica."
— PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
“THE ARMAGEDDON CHORD is like The Da Vinci Code with a heavy-metal soundtrack!”
— Katherine Turman, Co-author of Louder Than Hell
“Combining the world of heavy metal with malevolent supernatural forces Wagner has created quite a fantastic read… a riveting thriller that is sure to keep readers glued to the pages until the very end…
The unique blending of ancient history, religion and heavy metal make this book unlike any others I have read…. if you're a reader of horror or fiction novels or if you're a musician, then THE ARMAGEDDON CHORD will be right up your alley. I know it kept me up turning pages into the wee hours of the morning.”
— PURE GRAIN AUDIO
“THE ARMAGEDDON CHORD is a quick, enjoyable read full of action, violence, hell-spawned (and human) monsters and original variations of scenarios common to end-time thrillers.
— DECIBEL MAGAZINE
“Jeremy is a pretty impressive dude.”
— PETER STRAUB, New York Times Bestselling Author, A Dark Matter, Ghost Story
“Jeremy Wagner is an up-and-coming voice in the realm of horror fiction.
His talent shines through this debut novel, and I can’t wait to see what his next offering will be.
A real page-turner, THE ARMAGEDDON CHORD strikes just the right note!”
— YASMINE GALENORN, New York Times/USA Today Bestselling Author The Otherworld Series
“THE ARMAGEDDON CHORD is a wild phantasmagoric thrill ride that will satisfy lovers of the darkest fantasy fiction and the heaviest of metal."
—PETER BLAUNER, New York Times Bestselling Author, The Intruder, Slipping Into Darkness
In this youth, Wagner would find himself writing several short stories. The hobby grew with him as he combined his love for stories with his songwriting as guitarist in the band Broken Hope.
He found that he enjoyed writing horror lyrics and that this process helped him become a better writer as a whole. Wagner began writing short stories based on his lyrics, and began to have his stories published. In the mid-'90s, Wagner started writing his first unpublished novels. Through the combination of his writing with his knowledge of music, Wagner came up with the basic idea for THE ARMAGEDDON CHORD.
Wagner has written lyrics to more than 70 published songs along with recording six albums, two MTV videos, and touring in 16 countries with his bands, Broken Hope and Lupara. Wagner has been published in RIP, Terrorizer, Metal Edge, Microhorror magazines and works of short stories through Perseus Books, St. Martin's Press, and Ravenous Romance.
Wagner's most recent published works include the short story, Romance Ain't Dead, which appears as the first story in the zombie-romance anthology Hungry For Your Love (St.
— Kirkus Reviews
"RABID HEART evokes a mix of Misfits lyrics and grainy VHS horror classics. The plot draws parallels to Cormac McCarthy's The Road..."
— Publishers Weekly Author Spotlight
"Zombies and the end of days don't stand a chance against true love. Jeremy Wagner's RABID HEART is good, clean apocalyptic fun."
— Alma Katsu, author of The Hunger
"RABID HEART. This book is sick and sweet, and I say that with respect!"
— Peter Blauner, NY Times bestselling author of The Intruder and Sunrise Highway
"RABID HEART is Wagner’s finest work to date. Exciting and near-addictive. A page-turner that avid horror aficionados will be drawn to with glee.”
— Dead Rhetoric Magazine
“RABID HEART is a next level opus that raises the stakes considerably. And good goddamn, is it a white-knuckle thrill ride.”
— Decibel Magazine
"Wagner debuts with a highly entertaining blend…of heavy metal and hardcore horror…
Electrified by breakneck pacing, a cast of over-the-top characters and memorable lines...this thriller neatly exploits the considerable shared fanbase of apocalyptic fiction and Apocalyptica."
— PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
“THE ARMAGEDDON CHORD is like The Da Vinci Code with a heavy-metal soundtrack!”
— Katherine Turman, Co-author of Louder Than Hell
“Combining the world of heavy metal with malevolent supernatural forces Wagner has created quite a fantastic read… a riveting thriller that is sure to keep readers glued to the pages until the very end…
The unique blending of ancient history, religion and heavy metal make this book unlike any others I have read…. if you're a reader of horror or fiction novels or if you're a musician, then THE ARMAGEDDON CHORD will be right up your alley. I know it kept me up turning pages into the wee hours of the morning.”
— PURE GRAIN AUDIO
“THE ARMAGEDDON CHORD is a quick, enjoyable read full of action, violence, hell-spawned (and human) monsters and original variations of scenarios common to end-time thrillers.
— DECIBEL MAGAZINE
“Jeremy is a pretty impressive dude.”
— PETER STRAUB, New York Times Bestselling Author, A Dark Matter, Ghost Story
“Jeremy Wagner is an up-and-coming voice in the realm of horror fiction.
His talent shines through this debut novel, and I can’t wait to see what his next offering will be.
A real page-turner, THE ARMAGEDDON CHORD strikes just the right note!”
— YASMINE GALENORN, New York Times/USA Today Bestselling Author The Otherworld Series
“THE ARMAGEDDON CHORD is a wild phantasmagoric thrill ride that will satisfy lovers of the darkest fantasy fiction and the heaviest of metal."
—PETER BLAUNER, New York Times Bestselling Author, The Intruder, Slipping Into Darkness
In this youth, Wagner would find himself writing several short stories. The hobby grew with him as he combined his love for stories with his songwriting as guitarist in the band Broken Hope.
He found that he enjoyed writing horror lyrics and that this process helped him become a better writer as a whole. Wagner began writing short stories based on his lyrics, and began to have his stories published. In the mid-'90s, Wagner started writing his first unpublished novels. Through the combination of his writing with his knowledge of music, Wagner came up with the basic idea for THE ARMAGEDDON CHORD.
Wagner has written lyrics to more than 70 published songs along with recording six albums, two MTV videos, and touring in 16 countries with his bands, Broken Hope and Lupara. Wagner has been published in RIP, Terrorizer, Metal Edge, Microhorror magazines and works of short stories through Perseus Books, St. Martin's Press, and Ravenous Romance.
Wagner's most recent published works include the short story, Romance Ain't Dead, which appears as the first story in the zombie-romance anthology Hungry For Your Love (St.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
January 16, 2018
Overall I found it an excellent resource on the subject, although it fell short in a couple of areas, reason why I'm giving it four stars instead of five. Among these are:
1. The treatments on compression deal only with dynamic compression of assets, no mention of statically compressing to serve them later was made.
2. Although it deals with brotli, zopfli is nowhere to be found (maybe precisely because static compression was missing).
3. When dealing with optimizing images, it barely mentions pngquant (on the last chapter, when automating optimizations), and doesn't recommend zopflipng, probably the best two tools to really squeeze pngs down; nor mozjpeg for jpgs.
4. It doesn't really emphasize the difference between lossless and lossy compression (which tools do which type of compression with what settings), his wording sometimes being misleading.
5. It doesn't deal with useful flags for the different programs to fine tune compression (e.g. svgo's --multipass, pgnquant's --speed 1).
Leaving these aside, the book has a deep enough treatment of HTTP/2, mentioning some classical recommendations to reduce HTTP/1.1 requests (such as image sprites), and why these are anti-patterns in HTTP/2, it deals with browser support for different features, how to polyfill in most scenarios, cites several useful resources to dig further; the list goes on.
All in all I highly recommend it for anyone interested on how to make websites leaner and faster. I hesitate a bit not giving it five stars, but hopefully the critiques mentioned above will be mended in future editions.
1. The treatments on compression deal only with dynamic compression of assets, no mention of statically compressing to serve them later was made.
2. Although it deals with brotli, zopfli is nowhere to be found (maybe precisely because static compression was missing).
3. When dealing with optimizing images, it barely mentions pngquant (on the last chapter, when automating optimizations), and doesn't recommend zopflipng, probably the best two tools to really squeeze pngs down; nor mozjpeg for jpgs.
4. It doesn't really emphasize the difference between lossless and lossy compression (which tools do which type of compression with what settings), his wording sometimes being misleading.
5. It doesn't deal with useful flags for the different programs to fine tune compression (e.g. svgo's --multipass, pgnquant's --speed 1).
Leaving these aside, the book has a deep enough treatment of HTTP/2, mentioning some classical recommendations to reduce HTTP/1.1 requests (such as image sprites), and why these are anti-patterns in HTTP/2, it deals with browser support for different features, how to polyfill in most scenarios, cites several useful resources to dig further; the list goes on.
All in all I highly recommend it for anyone interested on how to make websites leaner and faster. I hesitate a bit not giving it five stars, but hopefully the critiques mentioned above will be mended in future editions.
February 29, 2020
I really liked this book, although I had already some prior knowledge in the subject I guess I could not fully understand some concepts. And some things really surprised me. Performance of css selectors for example, for some reason I thought the more nesting you do the more work it requires from the browser to find respective nodes in DOM. And it seems that in reality nesting doesn't matter at all, what matters are css combinators like +, >, ~, they are indeed less performant. And it's just a small example from everything this book taught me.
The only drawback I can see is that when telling about automation it talks about Gulp and not Webpack. Although I guess it's due to the book being written like 4 years ago. I would love to see another edition concentrating more on JS and modern frameworks, their performance and overall issues. On the whole I'm happy with this book.
The only drawback I can see is that when telling about automation it talks about Gulp and not Webpack. Although I guess it's due to the book being written like 4 years ago. I would love to see another edition concentrating more on JS and modern frameworks, their performance and overall issues. On the whole I'm happy with this book.
November 7, 2021
Una excelente guia para entender elementos necesarios para mejorar el performance de una aplicacion o pagina web.
Lo unico que en lo personal brinque un poco fueron los ejemplos practicos. Puede ser mucho para los que solo buscamos aprender del tema, y no como hacerlo a profundidad. Pero en si es bueno que el libro contenga esos tips.
Requerido para ingenieros de performance.
Lo unico que en lo personal brinque un poco fueron los ejemplos practicos. Puede ser mucho para los que solo buscamos aprender del tema, y no como hacerlo a profundidad. Pero en si es bueno que el libro contenga esos tips.
Requerido para ingenieros de performance.
October 21, 2023
The book now feels dated, even when many of the explained solutions still works and help you to improve the performance of your web application.
March 8, 2017
if you are a beginner in web optimization that is good start otherwise, it's just good to read. All in all, I enjoy reading that.
July 23, 2022
I am not a web performance guru; most of the issues seem to have to do with network vs compute, and on the balance, what tradeoffs can be "hinted" at on the web page, whose data is, situated on the server to optimize responsiveness and performance. At issue, is scaling of images primarily in this book, and the size of the .jpg/.bmp etc. The book is math light, which is unfortunate- most of the calculations are likely quite simple. Perhaps this is a bit of an overstatement, but rough napkin ballpark figures are likely easy to arrive at.
August 6, 2020
Great introduction to optimizing web pages and there performance. You first learn 'the why', then 'the how'. Tools and techniques are introduced for learning how to assess and optimize your sites pages and assets (assets like: html, css, js, fonts, images, and so on). I think this is a very important topic.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews