Performance Improvements

Our team is a stickler for performance, especially when it comes to services like Lifeblob that are meant to provide a desktop application like usability. Last week, we made a couple of improvements to enhance your experience of browsing the timeline:

  • We bunched up multiple images into css sprites ( simply put, one image file with multiple images ). This reduces 49 image requests that we made earlier to 1 and makes the timeline loading considerably faster.
  • We moved external integrations like google maps to load just in time for their use. This defers ~84KB of javascript library downloads and significantly reduces the time taken for the timeline to load.
  • We revamped the display engine that shows your posts on the timeline and also decides which posts get the opportunity to be shown. You will notice a significant decrease in the response time when you scroll or zoom the timeline ( If you are an IE6 user, you will notice a HUGE difference ).
  • We pre-fetch the javascript libraries that are required to render the timeline even before you are logged in. That way, by the time you login, we have most of the libraries ready to go.

I hope these changes will make it more fun for you to browse timelines. If you are looking for best practices in speeding up your website, do check out this post at Yahoo Developer Network.

April 15, 2008 · Filed Under Features

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