YSlow - Another Webdevelopment helper...

I wrote about Firebug in my previous post which is integrated with Firefox to put a wealth of development tools at your fingertips while you browse.

In addition to Firebug I use YSlow which is a firefox add-on integrated with the popular Firebug web development tool. YSlow analyzes web pages and tells you why they're slow based on the following rules for high performance Web Sites

1. Make Fewer HTTP Requests
2. Use a Content Delivery Network
3. Add an Expires Header
4. Gzip Components
5. Put CSS at the Top
6. Move Scripts to the Bottom
7. Avoid CSS Expressions
8. Make JavaScript and CSS External
9. Reduce DNS Lookups
10. Minify JavaScript
11. Avoid Redirects
12. Remove Duplicate Scripts
13. Configure ETags

YSlow gives u the following:

• Performance report card
• HTTP/HTML summary
• List of components in the page
• Tools including JSLint

Research conducted by the Exceptional Performance team is documented in the following Yahoo! User Interface Blog articles.

• Performance Research, Part 1: What the 80/20 Rule Tells Us about Reducing HTTP Requests
• Performance Research, Part 2: Browser Cache Usage - Exposed!
• Performance Research, Part 3: When the Cookie Crumbles
• Performance Research, Part 4: Maximizing Parallel Downloads in the Carpool Lane

If you dont have Firebug Install it here and YSlow here