Defining Optimization – Instart Logic

1
DEFINING OPTIMIZATION
BY DAWN PARZYCH
2
(No Transcript)
3
The web performance community has expanded
rapidly over the years and many terms have been
used to describe the effort to make the web
faster. You may have heard terms such as web
performance optimization, front end optimization,
web content optimization, and application
optimization and your head may be spinning,
wondering what the differences are and which one
is right for you. At the core all of these terms
refer to the process of improving the amount of
time required for a web page to load and become
usable. The reason for the large number of terms
to refer to a single topic can be attributed in
part to organizations trying to differentiate
their offerings in the space. Creating a new term
doesnt necessarily differentiate one offering
from another  what it does is create confusion
and muddy the water. The goal of each of these
is to reduce page load time, reduce the amount of
data sent on the wire, improve the user
experience, and increase revenues. If these terms
are all working towards the same end of goal of a
better user experience and faster page load
times, then why the need for so many different
terms? Here is my attempt to shed some light on
the nuances and differences between these terms
WEB PERFORMANCE OPTIMIZATION OR WPO
A catch-all term that applies to improving the
performance of web applications by optimizing the
back end, front end, or transport of resources.
While this should apply to the entire range of
optimizations, some people use this
interchangeably with Front End Optimization.
4
FRONT END OPTIMIZATION OR FEO
Optimizing or transforming the content or
resources of a web page to improve the page load
time. FEO reduces the number of resources on a
page, makes content smaller, and enables the
browser to render a page faster. Common
techniques used in FEO include domain sharding,
minification, concatenation, image sprites,
asynchronous JavaScript, and prioritization of
content.
WEB CONTENT OPTIMIZATION
Web Content Optimization is the same as front end
optimization. In the performance space this term
confuses me. Web content optimization is a term
frequently used in marketing and search engine
optimization, referring to the attempt to make
sure that the content being created is reaching
the appropriate audience and is easily
searchable. Using a term that is popular and
widely used in another industry confuses me.
APPLICATION OPTIMIZATION
People frequently use Web Performance
Optimization and Front End Optimization
interchangeably. This led to the creation of the
term Application Optimization, as there is more
to optimizing an application than modifying the
front end code.
5
Application delivery is composed of (1) the
back end or server side, (2) the front end or
client side, and (3) the delivery of the content
from point a to point b. Optimizations are
available for each of these areas and have
evolved over time. In the beginning optimization
focused on the back end and delivery aspects
leading to solutions such as caching,
keep-alives, compression and content delivery
networks. As time progressed there was a
revelation at least 80 of the time needed to
download and render a web page was spent on the
front end so why not focus optimization efforts
there? This led to the introduction of the front
end optimization field and techniques like
minification, domain sharding, concatenation and
image optimization.
WHICH DEFINITION IS BEST?
Ultimately, to have a high-performing web site
you cant just choose one area to optimize and
hope for the best all three components need to
be optimized, which is why I prefer the term
application optimization. When optimizations at
all three steps along the application delivery
chain work in conjunction with one another, the
end result is a highly-optimized application.
Focusing on only one or two areas leaves room for
additional improvement. It is not just about
what you choose to call an optimization or suite
of optimizations  what is more important is how
the optimizations are implemented and the
benefits they provide. The next post in this
series will discuss the risks and rewards of
various front end optimizations to help you
decide what optimizations are best for you.
6
Visit our Blog for more