When I re-introduced my five articles on Web Performance Concepts last night, I had forgotten than I had already written two additional articles in the series.
Look for Parts VII and IX in the next few days.
The intertubes of the Web are abuzz with talk of the new, open-source Google Chrome browser [two articles here and here]. I will not presume to wade into the debate of whether it is necessary, or what strategic business goals Google has set that rely on having its own browser. I will limit my comments to the area of Web performance.
When I read that Google Chrome was an open-source browser, the first thought was: is it theirs or a re-branded Firefox? No one knows at this point, but that will have a direct effect on how the browser performs, and how extensible it will be.
Unlike other standards, HTTP standards set out how a browser uses the underlying TCP stack. MSIE6/7 have very broken implementations, and MSIE8 is building on those by increasing the number of connections per host to 6, up from 2 set out in RFC 2616.
Firefox can be configured to mangle this as well, but by default it plays by the standard, adding the option of HTTP pipelining into its mix of persistent HTTP connections.
It will be VERY interesting to see how Google Chrome comes configured out of the box, and how much control users have over the HTTP behaviour of this new browser.
This area is a mess. No browser implements this standards in a way that is completely consistent with the written text, and page designers have to use a variety of page testing products (such as BrowserCam) prior to release to ensure that their design is somewhat presentable in all browsers on all platforms.
The rendering of Javascript will be crucial in this new browser, as so much of the new Web is built on applications that are almost completely Javascript-driven.
I am sure that there will be sites that will be completely mangled by the new browser, but, knowing Google, we will be getting a 2.0 release, the 1.0 release being used within Google for a while now to test it under real-world conditions.
As a few sites in the world do use cache-control headers properly, it will be interesting to see how a browser created by one of the major ad-serving and search providers on the Web tracks page objects. Will it follow explicit/implicit caching rules? Or will it impose a heavy penalty on bandwidth by downloading objects more frequently than other production browsers do?
Back in 2005, Google launched a badly designed and gighly flawed product called the Google Web Accelerator. This product proxied Web traffic through the Google network and allowed the company to develop a pattern of user browsing habits and search selections that would allow them to better target their ad products.
I have a great fear that this will be an integrated part of the Google browser project. If it is, it should be a configurable option, not an out-of-the box standard.
I am sure that there will be a few performance conversations that occur around the Google Chrome browser in the weeks ahead. I look forward to hearing what the community has to say about this new addition to the browser wars.
At the The China Vortex, Paul Denlinger discusses how there is no unified “China market”, no monolithic, simplistic, single-minded Goliath that the rest of the world is trying to deal with. While I do not have the depth of on the ground experience that Mr. Denlinger has (I have not yet been blessed with the opportunity to visit or do business in China), I can see the truth he brings to the discussion.
One of the great pits that Western culture falls into when dealing with the China problem is just that: It is seen as a problem, not an opportunity to expand and learn from a culture that deals with life, philosophy, and business in a very different manner.
This should come as no surprise to any astute student of History, or even modern geopolitics, as the way that nations deal with perceived threats or challenges is to create a national culture of The Other, the us-v-them foreign policy.
When Japan was the country du jour in the 1980s, the Western World respected it, in a very shallow way, as a fellow industrial nation with a strong warrior culture. However, it was treated in a simple way, with Western media portrayals that strengthened perceived stereotypes, and plastered over the profound differences that exist within Japan, and within the Japanese people.
China is even more of a victim of this Politics of the Other, having spent more than 50 years as one of the adversaries in the Cold War, being vilified and portrayed in the least flattering light possible. Even without the base Human interpretation of simplistic interpretations of the Other, the West is crippled from the start in its attempts to understand a nation as large, diverse, and fractured as China.
China is far more than Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong and small cadre of smaller, but no less important industrial / post-industrial metropolitan areas.
Drawing on my experience in trying to interpret Internet performance data from within this nation, it is clear to even the casual observer that the Chinese Internet does not simply exist in the major cities. It extends into the far reaches of the country, fractured by the internal conflicts of the connectivity providers, government officials at a many levels, and the unstoppable drive and creativity of the people who see the Internet as an opportunity to make their way in their world.
Cultural and national stereotypes are the way that humans ineffectively deal with the differences that exist. But just as the terms “All Brits..”, “All the French..”, “All Germans…”, “All Argentinians..”, et al. should be treated with disdain and seen as a sign of ignorance, using the words “All Chinese…” or “All of China…” should be quickly quashed and carted off to the dustbin of simplistic paranoia and xenophobia.
There is no such thing as a threat. As it is often stated in other contexts, a threat is simply an opportunity that is hidden by your own prejudices.
This is a poll designed for those of us who are here legally, but who cannot influence the outcome of this election which will affect us so profoundly. Tell us here at Newest Industry what scares you the most.
[poll id=”4″]
Two years ago I created a series of five blog articles, aimed at both business and technical readers, with the goal of explaining the basic statistical concepts and methods I use when analyzing Web performance data in my role as a Web performance consultant.
Most of these ideas were core to my thinking when I developed GrabPERF in 2005-2006, as I determined that it was vital that people not only receive Web performance measurement data for their site, but they receive it in a way that allows them to inform and shape the business and technical decisions they make on a daily basis.
While I come from a strong technical background, it is critical to be able to present the data that I work with in a manner that can be useful to all components of an organization, from the IT and technology leaders who shape the infrastructure and design of a site, to the marketing and business leaders who set out the goals for the organization and interact with customers, vendors and investors.
Providing data that helps negotiate the almost religious dichotomy that divides most organizations is crucial to providing a comprehensive Web performance solution to any organization.
These articles form the core of an ongoing series of discussion focused on the the pitfalls of Web performance analysis, and how to learn and avoid the errors others have already discovered.
The series went over like a lead balloon and this left me puzzled. While the basic information in the articles was technical and focused on the role that simple statistics play in affecting Web performance technology and business decisions inside an organization, they formed the core of what I saw as an ongoing discussion that organizations need to have to ensure that an organization moves in a single direction, with a single purpose.
I have decided reintroduce this series, dredging it from the forgotten archives of this blog, to remind business and IT teams of the importance of the Web performance data they use every day. It also serves as a guide to interpreting the numbers that arise from all the measurement methodologies that companies use, a map to extract the most critical information in the raging sea of data.
The five articles are:
I look forward to your comments and questions on these topics.
The Web is a many-splendored thing, with a very split personality. One side is drive to find ways to make the most money possible, while the other is driven to implement cool technology in an effective and efficient manner (most of the time).
Andy King, in Website Optimization (O’Reilly), tries to address these two competing forces in a way that both can understand. This is important because, as we all know from our own lives, most of the time these two competing parts of the same whole are right; they just don’t understand the other side.
I have seen this trend repeated throughout my nine years in the Web performance industry, five years as a consultant. Companies torn asunder, viewing the Business v. Technology interaction as a Cold War, one that occasionally flares up in odd places which serve as proxies between the two.
Website Optimization appears at first glance to be torn asunder by this conflict. With half devoted to optimizing the site for business and the other to performance and design optimization, there will be a cry from the competing factions that half of this book is a useless waste of time.
These are the organizations and individuals who will always be fighting to succeed in this industry. These are the people and companies who don’t understand that success in both areas is critical to succeeding in a highly competitive Web world.
The first half of the book is dedicated to the optimization of a Web site, any Web site, to serve a well-defined business purpose. Discussing terms such as SEO, PPC, and CRO can curdle the blood of any hardcore techie, but they are what drive the design and business purpose of a Web site. Without a way to get people to a site, and use the information on the site to do business or complete the tasks that they need to, there is no need to have a technological infrastructure to support it.
Conversely, a business with lofty goals and a strategy that will change the marketplace will not get a chance to succeed if the site is slow, the pages are large, and design makes cat barf look good. Concepts such HTTP compression, file concatenation, caching, and JS/CSS placement drive this side of the personality, as well as a number of application and networking considerations that are just too far down the rat hole to even consider in a book with as broad a scope as this one.
Although on the surface, the concepts discussed in this book will see many people put it down as it isn’t business or techie enough, those who do buy the book will show that they have a grasp of the wider perspective, the one that drives all successful sites to stand tall in a sea of similarity.
See the Website Optimization book companion site for more information, chapter summaries and two sample chapters.
The title is a deliberate misspelling. An event in the last two weeks has got me thinking about EWaste, and the way it is treated in the US, and likely the entire developed world.
About two weeks ago, #1 son told my wife to “STOP THE CAR!” as they were driving down the road near our house. Thinking he was mad, she did. #1 son leaped out and returned to the car with an HP Pavilion Desktop, in the vain hope that it could replace his current dinosaur computer.
This morning, I completed the configuration process by adding a wireless network card to this machine and they are now up and running with a computer from 2006-07, rather than the one they had been on up until then, which was from 1999 (seriously).
This leaves me to wonder why someone would dispose of a machine that is still perfectly functional. A machine that could have been donated to anyone of a number of causes to help those far less fortunate than we are.
I may complain incessantly about my lack of a MacBook ($|Pro|Air), but in the area of technology, I am well off. I have an excellent pair of servers that host my sites. I have a number of older machines in my basement to serve a variety of purposes, including development. I have my personal laptop and a very powerful work-provided laptop. And my wife has the most powerful machine in the house, to get e-mail and cruise Craigslist.
We are not computer-challenged. Yet, I do not take the disposal of any of this technology lightly. If I do dispose of technology, it goes into the city garbage ONLY on hazardous waste days. If I can, I give the machines to organizations who can use even a very old machine.
The processing of EWaste is a shameful burden that the wealthy of the world impose and throw down to the down-trodden. We pass along the poisons to those who are least able to say no, without a second thought.
To find and reincarnate a computer on the street is the act of a truly geeky family.
To have thrown the computer to the curb in the first place is a sign of the shameful ignorance in our society for what is done with EWaste.
Are you being a responsible computer owner, as a person or a corporation?
Steve Gillmor comments on TechCrunch today that Comcast’s caps on bandwidth may finally drive people from the land of torrents, and to the land of streaming. [here]
While I agree that the promise of streaming is long overdue, there is the one area that streaming still can’t fill: The mobile viewer. I don’t mean folks on mobile phones, although with the growth of 3G in the Americas (Europe and Asia laugh at us in the area), the mobile market will become more important.
No, I am referring to the mobile, laptop-using traveller, mainly the business traveller, although leisure travellers are starting to take their laptops with them more often. Streaming doesn’t work on the road, in a hotel with a crappy connection, in an airport, or somewhere were the 3G isn’t 3G enough.
While streaming will become more prevalent, it won’t unseat the culture of Torrents for a few years yet. It will happen. But affordable, reliable connectivity saturation across the Americas has to occur first. And, in some ways, Comcast and the other providers are the ones hampering this process.
The focus of the connectivity providers on their dinosaur cage-match with the FCC has left them ignorant of the asteroid screaming toward them. In order to create a streaming market that they can profit from, they have to open the pipes, lower the costs, and increase the options for the consumer of their Internet/bandwidth services. If the connectivity they provide to the consumers can’t support the desire for the streaming economy, the Torrent reality will not fade away.
Over at NewTeeVee, there is a detailed look at the way that the streams were served and who served them. They also have a great discussion of the P2P and Torrent downloads, serving as an alternate method of getting the high quality streams out to a larger audience.
But John Furrier poses an interesting question, just before he quotes the entire NewTeeVee post: What’s the largest audience for a live stream?
Most of the streams that were viewed by people at NBC and other media providers were delayed. And while the concept of streaming is still valid, it doesn’t fulfill the promise of an “as it happens” delivery of streaming media.
So folks, what is the largest live video stream audience?
My bylined article Industry Perspectives: Best Practices for Flawless Web Multimedia Streams is up! Go check it out!
The discussion centers around how to approach monitoring and measuring the performance of Streaming Media, an area that is far more challenging than traditional Web page and site performance measurement.
There are a number of challenges an organization faces when deciding to adopt some type of streaming media strategy. The main one is “Do we go it alone?”.
The article addresses a number of these areas.
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