I finally finished reading Even Faster Web Sites. It’s good, but in terms of things for my day to day, it’s kind of a mixed bag. In some ways (specifically in the areas of JavaScript efficiency, image compression and CSS selectors) it’s more practical than High Performance Web Sites and in others I had a hard time coming up with a concrete example that I’d actually run across that would be served by the topic at hand.

With that in mind, looking at the table of contents I found the bolded chapters most interesting for my day-to-day coding (your mileage may vary, of course)

Chapter 1. Understanding Ajax Performance
Chapter 2. Creating Responsive Web Applications
Chapter 3. Splitting the Initial Payload
Chapter 4. Loading Scripts Without Blocking
Chapter 5. Coupling Asynchronous Scripts
Chapter 6. Positioning Inline Scripts
Chapter 7. Writing Efficient JavaScript
Chapter 8. Scaling with Comet
Chapter 9. Going Beyond Gzipping
Chapter 10. Optimizing Images
Chapter 11. Sharding Dominant Domains
Chapter 12. Flushing the Document Early
Chapter 13. Using Iframes Sparingly
Chapter 14. Simplifying CSS Selectors
Appendix A. Performance Tools

Which isn’t to say that the other chapters weren’t interesting. They were, I just don’t need to deal with some of the issues solved by those techniques very often in my day job. That was especially true of the the Comet chapter and many of the issues related to managing multiple script files and/or large blocks of JS code.

Some comments on the chapters I found most interesting:

Loading Scripts Without Blocking
A truly detailed examination of this topic. Something likely ignored by 90% of developers working today, outlined in its full glory. If you ever had a question about this topic, it’s now answered and sitting on your bookshelf.

Positioning Inline Scripts
There’s a multi-chapter discussion of the intricacies of serving JavaScript in the middle of this book and this was one discussion that was especially interesting to me, if just for the technical issues at work. I use very little inline code, so this is rarely applicable to me personally, but it was interesting to read about nonetheless.

Writing Efficient JavaScript
A really well-written chapter. Makes me want to buy Zakas’ book Professional JavaScript for Web Developers

Chapter 9. Going Beyond Gzipping
This was a great examination of the 10-15% of users that don’t see gzipped content and what you can do to help them. I’m not sure how much of this I would actually put into practice, but it’s nice to know what the issues are if I ever find myself trying to squeeze every advantage out of a site.

Chapter 10. Optimizing Images
Most of this I knew. My images do pretty well with smush.it and I spend a lot of time making sure my images are well-optimized. Still, this is a comprehensive chapter and should be required reading for anyone that touches the front end, be they designers or front end developers.

Chapter 12. Flushing the Document Early
I’m going to do this for the newest version of DrunkenFist.com. Why? Because it’s technically challenging and seems like it would provide real benefit to users. That’s what they call a win-win in my house.

Chapter 14. Simplifying CSS Selectors
People are universally confused by the fact that CSS selectors are read from right to left. That’s just the way it is.

I’m now mindful of expensive selectors, but I still have a hard time internalizing the fact that something like “#someDiv a” is expensive because it first looks at every anchor on the page. That’s just weird.

I’m not going to change much about the way I code, but it’s going to be something I keep in the back of my mind when I deal with sites that feature a ton of elements.

Appendix A. Performance Tools
A great rundown of what’s out there. I never knew about hammerhead. Now I do.