Holistic Performance

I’ve been talking a lot over the past year or so about the importance of moving performance beyond something that is seen as a “developer task”. I was really happy that Stoyan Stefanov let me expand on that for this year’s (excellent!) edition of the Performance Calendar:

Bad performance online is not a technological problem; it’s a cultural one. Tools are increasing in number and improving in quality. Posts and books are written explaining the tricks and techniques to use to make your site weigh less, load faster and scroll more smoothly. Yet for all this attention, performance online is getting worse, not better…

If we want to reverse the troubling trend of increasingly bloated and slow sites, we need to attack the cultural and procedural issues with the same fervor that we attack the technical ones. Only by thinking about performance throughout the process can we reverse the trend and start making experiences that delight our users, not frustrate them.

If you’re interested in more about this, I also wrote a chapter for the latest Smashing Magazine book about creating a culture of performance and will be talking about it at In Control in Februrary (if you sign up, use code ‘100TIM’ to save $100).