Low latency is important to the success of individual applications on iGoogle and to iGoogle as a product. Applications that load quickly and are responsive to user input will be more popular, are more likely to remain installed on a user's page, and are more likely to gain new users through sharing. Conversely, slow applications make for a poor user experience, and are likely to be removed by users and possibly penalized in the directory.
NOTE: focus on the latency of the home view as there are multiple gadgets on a page a latency is critical As such, do the following: - Install Firebug for Firefox debugging - it shows you how long the page takes to load and it has a JS profiler built in.
- For IE, please use HTTPWatch
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Sprite all related images (i.e., all images for menu buttons)
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Combine all javascript and CSS files - have one of each
- Put the javascript at the bottom of the gadget - this allows the rest of the gadget to load faster
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Minify javascript - use http://code.google.com/p/minify/ and http://www.crockford.com/javascript/jsmin.html
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Strip comments & white space in HTML
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Load images for certain states only - can download others in the background if necessary
Also, the gadgets API provides a number of ways to decrease both latency of your applications and load on your servers. Make sure to check out the Developer's Guide for tips on optimizing gadgets to work under high volume. Additionally, there are some relevant details in the OpenSocial Latency Combat Field Manual that apply to more than just OpenSocial gadgets. |