This month the @DSMWebGeeks treated the community to an informal meeting with the goal of discussing what developers and designers do to optimize the client side of their websites.
The meeting started out with introductions and a brief overview of how the evening was to proceed. Unlike past meetings, this meeting was held in an open forum format, allowing anyone to speak up at any time with both questions and answers. I was quite pleased with the number of topics that were covered. Everything from how to use YSlow to analyze a web page, to using CSS sprites (or “spriting” as it was referred to) to reduce the number of HTTP requests preformed on your page were covered. Some pretty slick tricks, including using channels in PhotoShop to optimize images were also covered.
It was great to see people from both the creative and the programming sides of the web world taking part in the conversations. This allowed everyone in the group to learn something new, while also refining the knowledge they may of already had.
Myself being nearly 100% on the programming side, I took away from the meeting a couple new tools (Google Page Speed and PNG Crush) to add to my tool belt. Google Page Speed is
“an open-source Firefox/Firebug Add-on. Webmasters and web developers can use Page Speed to evaluate the performance of their web pages and to get suggestions on how to improve them.”Basically it’s a lot like FireBug but with some additional features. And PNG Crush can be used to reduce the size of PNG files that you should be using on your site instead of GIFs.
Overall, the content provided by the DSMWebGeeks in this meeting was great for all levels of developer/designer expertise.
Event details
Topic: Optimizing Client Side
Group: Des Moines Web Geeks
Website: http://www.dsmwebgeeks.com/
Date / Time: July 6, 2009 @ 7:00pm
Attendee #: 10 – 15
Google Page Speed is a neat little tool, I'd never heard of it until I read this article. Not only does it help you identify what you can improve, but it even gives you hints on how to do it. I've gone through and optimized at least one site using its advice.