Friday Quickie: Google’s Page Speed rocks
Yesterday Google released their Firefox add-on, Page Speed. Until now, this compliment to Firebug was closed source and only used internally by Google. Now it’s free and open source – and it’s pretty cool.
What’s it do?
Page Speed adds new tabs to the Firebug panel letting you “record” a page load, saving metrics on everything the browser pulled down. Then Page Speed examines the recorded metrics and provides a detailed performance analysis, including suggestions for tweaking your code. It will even find unused CSS in your style sheets and tell you precisely which lines you can remove.
There are loads of desktop applications and web sites that can give you similar stats and speed tips, but Page Speed’s integration with Firebug, robust data collection and smart analytical abilities really stand out. It’s no wonder Google used it internally.
Last month I wrote about 10 Firefox Add-ons for Web Designers. Less than a full day after its release, Page Speed is definitely #11 on that list, and easily in the top 5 must-haves.
Yslow is similar to this it looks like. These are great ways to find problems.
Hi, yes Page Speed is quite useful. However be careful with the advice under ‘use efficient CSS selectors’ as it says to not use element selectors but class selectors instead, leading to a classic case of ‘classitis’