
Design Fast Websites - blackswan
http://www.slideshare.net/stubbornella/designing-fast-websites-presentation
======
jrnkntl
I always keep these rules of thumb (also by Yahoo):
<http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html>

And I like the smush.it linked in the presentation that 'minifies' your
images.

------
geuis
These are all very good tips. I don't recommend using CSS hacks for per-IE-
versioning. You can just as easily use(and should!) conditional stylesheets.
You can specify versions for different versions of IE if you need to. Non-IE
browsers will ignore them, and you can tailor them to the versions of IE you
care to support.

~~~
IsaacSchlueter
I don't want to start a holy war. Of course, there are some arguments in favor
of conditional comments. However, it's not an obvious win. As a web developer
at Yahoo, I've seen this argument many times over the last 3 years. Here's the
cliff notes:

 _Hacks Proponent_ With star-property and _property, you can serve a single
css file, reducing the number of requests.

 _CC_ So, serve ie.css and standards.css. IE doesn't get standards.css.

 _Hacks_ But, then you have to maintain two copies of the css. That sucks.

 _CC_ Nuh uh! You have a script that concatenates them. You still write ie-
hacks.css separately, but your build process tacks it onto the end of ie-
production.css.

 _Hacks_ With the IE-targeting star-property and _property hacks, you can keep
the hacked code close to the "real" code. Even if you concatenate in
production, you still have to have two separate files. If something changes,
you have to remember to change it in two places.

 _CC_ So, have your build script pull out the star-property and _property
rules from your single CSS file, and only serve them to IE with conditional
comments.

 _Hacks_ But, then you're doing exactly the same thing as having these hacks,
but _also_ maintaining a script to do what the browser gives you for free.
More complexity in your build process = more room for bugs.

And that, generally, is the end of the discussion. Occasionally, you get this:

 _CC_ But those hacks can't target a specific version!

 _Hacks_ But IE<6 is not supported anyhow. How specific do you really need to
be in your CSS? Have you ever actually targeted a browser version other than
"ie lte 6" or "ie lte 7"?

 _CC_ That's not the point!

These are the reasons that, as a matter of corporate policy, Yahoo generally
prefers _property and star-property to conditional comments.

~~~
jhancock
thanks for the above two posts. You guys made my day. I'm in the the final
throws of trying to make a good site look "acceptable" on IE6. Your experience
helps my isolated decision process. I hope this threads runs further.

Particularly, I am wrestling with this: My site is mostly text. Typography is
king here. Its easy to make it look nice on OS X. But both Firefox and IE6 on
WinXP look like hell. This is mostly a WinXP core fonts problem. But the same
font between Firefox and IE6 on WinXP looks different and I can't find an
acceptable balance. Let me add to that: I can't find any "readable" core font
on WinXP. What do you do?

~~~
geuis
I'm a Mac guy too, but have also spent years developing sites on Windows. One
of the biggest giveaways that tell me a site has been developed exclusively on
a Mac and probably not tested much on Windows is the fonts.

This is a pretty recent chart of font availabilities:
[http://www.webspaceworks.com/resources/fonts-web-
typography/...](http://www.webspaceworks.com/resources/fonts-web-
typography/48/)

From personal experience, stay away from Lucida. One of the most common fonts
across all platforms is Arial. I usually recommend using this for your general
copy font. The attempt to render Lucida looks really crappy on Windows if its
missing, and you can never tell which computers have it and which ones don't.
That being said, Lucida is a nice looking font when its available. If _you_
are you looking to use Lucida, read below.

This is a solution that's been promoted for a couple years, font-family:
"Lucida Sans Unicode", "Lucida Grande", Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;

It was talked about here:
[http://www.brownbatterystudios.com/sixthings/2007/03/14/luci...](http://www.brownbatterystudios.com/sixthings/2007/03/14/lucida-
hybrid-the-grande-alternative/#comment-23011) There is an updated posting from
this year that you should also read:
[http://www.brownbatterystudios.com/sixthings/2009/02/18/luci...](http://www.brownbatterystudios.com/sixthings/2009/02/18/lucida-
hybrid-revisited/)

Its definitely a good idea to do some cross-platform testing. Another idea is
to use the SIFR technique, although it relies on Flash(not my favorite
recommendation).

~~~
_pius
_Another idea is to use the SIFR technique, although it relies on Flash(not my
favorite recommendation)._

I'd actually recommend Cufón instead:

<http://wiki.github.com/sorccu/cufon/about>

