Improve download speed with YSlow Firefox extension

Yahoo has released the much awaited (by me at least!) YSlow firebug extension which tests download speed and gives recommendations based on the famous 14 rules for fast web pages.

In my work I have been able to test a few of these parameters; including the number of hits on the server, expressions in the CSS files, gzip, and minify. I’ve had great results with changes made on high volume websites especially with reductions in the number of http requests for images called from the css.

In particular I’ve seen around 25% improvements in download speed when I combined the images for the four corners of a rounded corner box, and included larger images which hold all states of an element in addition to all sides.

YSlow has several views :

  • Performance – grades your website based on the rules for fast web pages.
  • Stats – shows you the difference between your page load with our without cache.
  • Components – indicates the information used to test your site; Type, URL, Expires, Gzip, Response Time, Size (Ungzip), and ETag

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One response to “Improve download speed with YSlow Firefox extension”

  1. Brianne Avatar

    YSlow is very nice. Thanks for the link. My favorite download speed tester is the pc911 speedtest http://www.pcnineoneone.com/speedtest.html

    Have a great day!