1. Chapter 1 Understanding Ajax Performance

   1. Trade-offs

   2. Principles of Optimization

   3. Ajax

   4. Browser

   5. Wow!

   6. JavaScript

   7. Summary

2. Chapter 2 Creating Responsive Web Applications

   1. What Is Fast Enough?

   2. Measuring Latency

   3. Threading

   4. Ensuring Responsiveness

   5. Summary

3. Chapter 3 Splitting the Initial Payload

   1. Kitchen Sink

   2. Savings from Splitting

   3. Finding the Split

   4. Undefined Symbols and Race Conditions

   5. Case Study: Google Calendar

4. Chapter 4 Loading Scripts Without Blocking

   1. Scripts Block

   2. Making Scripts Play Nice

   3. Browser Busy Indicators

   4. Ensuring (or Avoiding) Ordered Execution

   5. Summarizing the Results

   6. And the Winner Is

5. Chapter 5 Coupling Asynchronous Scripts

   1. Code Example: menu.js

   2. Race Conditions

   3. Preserving Order Asynchronously

   4. Multiple External Scripts

   5. General Solution

   6. Asynchronicity in the Real World

6. Chapter 6 Positioning Inline Scripts

   1. Inline Scripts Block

   2. Preserving CSS and JavaScript Order

   3. Danger: Stylesheet Followed by Inline Script

7. Chapter 7 Writing Efficient JavaScript

   1. Managing Scope

   2. Efficient Data Access

   3. Flow Control

   4. String Optimization

   5. Avoid Long-Running Scripts

   6. Summary

8. Chapter 8 Scaling with Comet

   1. How Comet Works

   2. Transport Techniques

   3. Cross-Domain

   4. Effects of Implementation on Applications

   5. Summary

9. Chapter 9 Going Beyond Gzipping

   1. Why Does This Matter?

   2. What Causes This?

   3. How to Help These Users?

10. Chapter 10 Optimizing Images

    1. Two Steps to Simplify Image Optimization

    2. Image Formats

    3. Automated Lossless Image Optimization

    4. Alpha Transparency: Avoid AlphaImageLoader

    5. Optimizing Sprites

    6. Other Image Optimizations

    7. Summary

11. Chapter 11 Sharding Dominant Domains

    1. Critical Path

    2. Who’s Sharding?

    3. Downgrading to HTTP/1.0

    4. Rolling Out Sharding

12. Chapter 12 Flushing the Document Early

    1. Flush the Head

    2. Output Buffering

    3. Chunked Encoding

    4. Flushing and Gzip

    5. Other Intermediaries

    6. Domain Blocking During Flushing

    7. Browsers: The Last Hurdle

    8. Flushing Beyond PHP

    9. The Flush Checklist

13. Chapter 13 Using Iframes Sparingly

    1. The Most Expensive DOM Element

    2. Iframes Block Onload

    3. Parallel Downloads with Iframes

    4. Connections per Hostname

    5. Summarizing the Cost of Iframes

14. Chapter 14 Simplifying CSS Selectors

    1. Types of Selectors

    2. The Key to Efficient CSS Selectors

    3. CSS Selector Performance

    4. Measuring CSS Selectors in the Real World

1. Appendix Performance Tools

   1. Packet Sniffers

   2. Web Development Tools

   3. Performance Analyzers

   4. Miscellaneous

2. Colophon

The animal on the cover of Even Faster Web Sites is a blackbuck antelope (Antilope cervicapra), an endangered species found mainly in India, also known as the Indian antelope. The V-shaped horns of the male blackbuck are ringed with several spiral twists and can be as long as 28 inches. The male's upper body is black or dark brown, and its belly and the rings around its eyes are white. The female is light brown and does not normally have a horn. Blackbucks roam the plains in herds of 15 to 20, feeding on grasses, flowers, and fruits. On the open plain, the blackbuck is one of the fastest animals on earth, able to reach speeds of 45 mph and outrun most predators over long distances.

From the 18th through the early 20th centuries, the blackbuck antelope was the most hunted wild animal in India. In 1932, several species of Indian deer and antelope, including the blackbuck, were introduced to Texas for hunting and breeding. Today, these species live on private hunting ranches and roam the surrounding hill country.They are so plentiful-having multiplied to 19,000 throughout the state-that many have been shipped to India to repopulate the native habitat.

Now protected in India by the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972, the blackbuck population is steady at 50,000 native animals, plus 43,000 descended from Texas and other populations. Although poaching is still a problem and humans have encroached on its land, its protected status gained attention in 2006 when Indian film star Salman Khan was sentenced to five years in jail for killing two blackbucks. According to Hindu mythology, the blackbuck is considered to be the vehicle of the moon god, Chandrama, and is believed to bestow prosperity wherever it lives.

The cover image is from the Dover Pictorial Archive. The cover font is Adobe ITC Garamond. The text font is Linotype Birka; the heading font is Adobe Myriad Condensed; and the code font is LucasFont's TheSansMonoCondensed.