In going through cases we have with some customers, we’ve seen a few instances where Internet Explorer does not cache shared static resources. Within Load Tester, this problem becomes immediately apparent:
Note that the shared CSS, Javascript, and images are re-requested again on the About page and every other recorded page that uses them. Note also, these files don’t come back with a 304 (Not Modified), but instead the full content of the file is sent over and over again through a HTTP 200. Normally, the browser should load these files … Continue reading »
We’ve seen that modern browsers have made great strides to improve efficiency in rendering and javascript performance. But, the differences seem to be less noticeable when the network is stubborn. On a recent trip, I ran into just this problem. During the evening, the hotel’s local Wi-Fi seemed at peak capacity, the DNS servers were sluggish, and just getting connections opened often added a couple seconds. Getting onto common sites like Slashdot seemed to take 30 seconds or more from the overburdened local connection.
This seemed like a … Continue reading »
The performance improvements in the latest browsers (Internet Explorer 8.0 and Firefox 3.5) have been eagerly awaited for many months…though they come at a price.
I reboot my laptop as infrequently as possible – which means that I keep Firefox running for weeks without restarting. At least, I would prefer to. But the longer it runs, the more memory it gobbles. The only way to reclaim it is to restart.
So when I read about the tab-isolation feature in Googles new Chrome browser which uses a separate process for each tab, it peaked my interest. I installed Chrome and tried a very quick (and not very scientific) test, as described below.
Firefox had been open … Continue reading »





