Three case studies focusing on images and how to improve performance and download size. Provides examples of both client-side and server-side solutions.
news.cnet.com/2100-1038_3-5172107.html nytimes.com/2005/06/21/technology/21iht-broad.html flickr.com/photos/foolswisdom/108953458/lightbox Broadband began to overtake dial-up in 2004* * In major U.S. Cities
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/tweak/average-web-page/ http://www.webperformancetoday.com/2012/05/24/average-web-page-size-1-mb/ “The size of the average web page of the top 1000 websites has more than tripled since 2008. In the past five years from 2008 to late 2012 the average web page grew from 312K to 1114K, over 3.5 times larger” – websiteoptimization.com (Nov 11, 2012) “In the past 18 months, the average web page has grown by 50% — from 702 KB in November 2010 to 1042 KB on May 1, 2012. At this rate, the average page will hit 2MB by 2015.” – webperformancetoday.com (May 24, 2012)
Sites used to generate these stats: http://bit.ly/highered-rwd averages for #highered RWD sites 128 sites sampled with iPhone UA and narrow screen (to simulate mobile) requests size 57 1.6 MB
…build a BBC News website that fits the needs of the maximum of users 3 years in the future. At the moment we have a mobile only responsive website. But eventually it will take over the desktop site. @tmaslen
HTML5 browsers IE9+ Firefox 3.5+ Opera 9+ and probably further back Safari 4+ Chrome 1+ (I think) iPhone and iPad iOS1+ Android phone and tablets 2.1+ Blackberry OS6+ Windows 7.5+ new Mango version Mobile Firefox all the versions we tested Opera Mobile all the versions we tested HTML4 browsers IE8- Blackberry OS5- Nokia S60 v6- Nokia S40 all versions All other Symbian variants Windows 7 phone pre-Mango …and many more that are too numerous to mention. http://responsivenews.co.uk/post/18948466399/cutting-the-mustard
if('querySelector' in document && 'localStorage' in window && 'addEventListener' in window) { // bootstrap the application } “Cutting the Mustard” http://responsivenews.co.uk/post/18948466399/cutting-the-mustard
A large part of any JS library is its DOM selector. If the browser has native CSS selecting then it removes the need for a DOM selector. QuerySelector has been available in Firefox since 3.5 at least and has been working in webkit for ages. It also works in IE9. document.querySelector http://responsivenews.co.uk/post/18948466399/cutting-the-mustard
Although we are not using it yet, we are planning on making considerable use of it. Imagine that if you first came to the mobile site we downloaded all the stories straight away and stored them in localStorage. They’d then be available to use while you are going through an areas of sketchy bandwidth. window.localStorage http://responsivenews.co.uk/post/18948466399/cutting-the-mustard
Another large part of any JS library is event support. Every browser made in the last 6 years (except IE8) supports DOM level 2 events. If the browser supports this then we know it has better standards support than IE8. window.addEventListener http://responsivenews.co.uk/post/18948466399/cutting-the-mustard
widths = [96, 130, 165, 200, 235, 270, 304, 340, 375, 410, 445, 485, 520, 555, 590, 625, 660, 695, 736] http://responsivenews.co.uk/post/50092458307/images “We made an arbitary decision to add a breakpoint every 30px from 96px up to 736px… informed more by the image sizes that fit into the old grid system available in BBC’s GEL layout guide.”
“At the moment making the choice based on element size is the best fit for us, as element widths do not correlate to viewport widths. We use images in many different contexts, stretched across columns, left aligned, etc, so we have to use element width.” http://responsivenews.co.uk/post/50092458307/images
The site records around 40 million unique users a week https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_News_Online http://www.digitalspy.com/media/news/a437075/us-election-brings-bbc-news-website-traffic-high.html Coverage of the (2012 U.S.) election… brought 16.4 million unique browsers across the BBC website and mobile services on November 7.
"…keeping the designer focused on achievable solutions at specific screen sizes by not trying to optimize one code base for everything and leveraging server-side solutions rather than force templating logic onto the front-end." @dmolsen
http://xkcd.com/1174/ “If I click 'no', I've probably given up on everything, so don't bother taking me to the page I was trying to go to. Just drop me on the homepage. Thanks.”
"The basic premise being that 90% of the mark-up and styles are the same on all browsers but some get just a little tweak here and there based on their browser's UA and supported properties. The primary images that we tweak are the carousel images. They're by far our biggest resource hog. By looking for mobile UAs we serve much smaller width/height imagery." @dmolsen
class="flex-caption">… Read More class="flex-caption">… Read More class="flex-caption">… Read More class="flex-caption">… Read More class="flex-caption">… Read More
HTML <br/>jQuery(function($){<br/>$.supersized({<br/>slide_interval : 30000,<br/>transition : 1,<br/>transition_speed : 500,<br/>keyboard_nav : 0,<br/>slide_links : 'blank',<br/>slides : [<br/>{image : 'images/slideshow/69.jpg', title : "…", thumb : 'images/slideshow/thumbs/69.jpg'},<br/>{image : 'images/slideshow/64.jpg', title : "…", thumb : 'images/slideshow/thumbs/64.jpg'},<br/>{image : 'images/slideshow/71.jpg', title : "…", thumb : 'images/slideshow/thumbs/71.jpg'},<br/>{image : 'images/slideshow/70.jpg', title : "…", thumb : 'images/slideshow/thumbs/70.jpg'},<br/>{image : 'images/slideshow/72.jpg', title : "…", thumb : 'images/slideshow/thumbs/72.jpg'}<br/>]<br/>});<br/>});<br/>
“I wanted to share my opinion of the new ND web site with you - in a word, it's awful. Quite frankly, I am unable to find anything about the site that is positive. It is not clear why the change was made but the individual that came up with the idea should be fired along with the individual(s) that approved the change. Contrary to the old site - I make every effort to avoid using the new site.”
Approach #1: 1x1 gif Doesn’t scale proportionally without javascript If width/height is set to “auto” in CSS, reverts to 1x1 http://codepen.io/erunyon/pen/uqypx http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/201306/how_to_proportionally_scale_images_that_have_dimension_attributes/
class="img-replace" src="data:image/png;base64,LongStringOfDataWithTheSameDimensionsAsTheImage" width="112" height="112" alt="Description of the image" title="Description of the image" data-image="/path/to/the/image.jpg" data-width="112" data-height="112">
class="img-noscript" src="/path/to/the/image.jpg" width="112" height="112" alt="Description of the image" title="Description of the image">
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