I have been asked to be a judge on a new web performance contest that is being run by Keynote Systems.  Over the last two plus years I have been building tools that make optimizing web applications as simple as a button click.  Others in the web performance community have been educating or writing their own tools …but… there are still plenty of sites out in the wild that need help.  Working with Keynote for the past couple months I have seen some pretty well know sites that need a lot of help. This is where the contest comes in.

The Contest:

“The competition is open to anyone who wants to make tired, poor, slow Web applications faster and more responsive. Entrants simply record the Web site path or transaction that they want to improve using KITE (Keynote Internet Testing Environment) which can be downloaded for free from http://kite.keynote.com/download-center.php. “

Read more about contest here.

Don’t not submit your site because you don’t want people to know it’s slow. Your users already do. This contest is a chance to get some free help and pointers on making it better. It also may be the leverage you need to get you point across that performance matters.  Performance is one of those funny things that some people need to be smacked across the face with in order to take it seriously.  Not sure of all the reasons for this my psychology training only goes as far as training a rat to push a leverage for a food pellet. Use the contest as a catalyst for firing up the team around making your site scream.

I am excited about the contest:  First – I get to be a judge, I just hope I get a gavel and get to site up high above the contestants to give my decision. Second – many times developers can do some simple things and make a big difference in there sites speed.  Remember it is even simpler when you use Rockstarapps tools.

The Webinar:

Last month, I did a webinar with the folks at Keynote you can check it out here. The webinar is about 1:20 it is well worth the time, we cover quit a few topics including; performance testing and performance optimization. If you don’t have an 1:20 to spend listening to me talk, just fast forward and look at the slides. Unfortunately, the video is only in windows media format.  You will need to download the video here or you can go here on kite.keynote.com to get the video as well (You will need to register).

Last but not least:

Over the last couple months I haven’t blogged as much as I like but that doesn’t mean lots of stuff it’s happening. Here is a list of exciting things that have been going on.

• Released a jsLint plugin for eclipse - This plugin brings all the features of Douglas Crockford’s jsLint library to eclipse. Click here for more information. Be warned not everyone on your team will agree with the issue it finds.
• Rockstar Web Profiler -This is huge, Rockstarapps is emassing a set of tools that one person coolly characterized as “One click global site optimization.” This new tools was originally called “Razorspeed Web Profiler” and is still being build and mantained by Coach Wei. We came together on this to make it easier for people to get all there performance tools in one place.. Check out the Rockstar Web Profiler here. Also checkout Coach Wei announcement here.
• Went to the Googleplex and met with Steve Souders, the conversation was good and got great feedback on both the optimizer and profiler. Next time I am going to bring my bathing suit for some swimming and beach volley ball – both of which I kick as at.
• On the my trip out to SFO, I slept in the garage of the www.bitsandbuzz.com world headquarters. It was a cool place to crash and the fresh brewed tea was awesome.
• Let’s not leave out the day job at Nexaweb, the dojo.E project is getting good traction of late. One application that it it will be rolled into production with is a CMS system.
• There is even more exciting news that I can’t talk about now, but if you follow me on twitter http://twitter.com/rockstarapps  I give out more and more clues everyday.

Last Question:

Today, there are a lot of optimization tools and knowledge (books, seminars, …) about producing a highly optimized website, though it seems like not everyone takes advantage of them. I would like to hear why you do or don’t optimize your sites.

Bob (Buffone)