Optimization
As the Razorfish Guide to SXSW became more fully developed, we started to look at key areas where we could make performance gains and either actually speed up the site or simply make the site appear to load more quickly. (Check out part 1 of our story to see how requirements for the site were gathered and part 2 to learn about how the site was architected)
Cache it good
One of the earliest steps we took to optimize the application was to use server-side caching. ASP.NET allows you to cache just about anything on the server for quick retrieval. Taking advantage of this feature means that you can avoid extra trips to the database, requests to other services, and repeating other slow or resource-intensive operations. The Razorfish.Web library’s abstraction makes ASP.NET’s caching easy to use, and we quickly added it both to all database calls and to store most MVC models.
Zip it up
A second key optimization was to add GZIP compression to our assets. GZIP compression shrinks the size of most text-based files (like HTML or JSON) down to almost nothing, and makes a huge difference in the amount of time it takes for a slow mobile client to download a response. IIS7 has this feature built in, but we were running the site off of an IIS6 server. Happily, Razorfish.Web.Mvc has an action filter included that supports compressing your responses with GZIP.
Strip out that whitespace
Next, we used Razorfish.Web’s dynamic JavaScript and CSS compression to strip out unnecessary characters and to compact things like variable names. Minifying your scripts and stylesheets reduces their file size dramatically. One of the nice features of Razorfish.Web is that it also can combine multiple files together, reducing the overall number of requests that a client has to make. All of this happens dynamically, so you’re free to work on your files in uncompressed form, and you don’t have to worry about going out of your way to compact and combine files.
Sprites
Another key optimization was combing all of the image assets into a single file, and using CSS background positioning to choose what image to display. Doing this not only cuts the number of requests that have to be made (from 10 to 1, in our case), but also cuts the overall amount of data that needs to be loaded. Each file has its own overhead, and you can cut that overhead by combining them.
Keep it in-line
As we started testing on the actual iPhone, we still weren’t satisfied with the page’s load time. There was a significant delay between the page loading and the scripts loading over the slow EDGE network. This defeated the purpose of the JSON navigation because the user was apt to click a link before the scripts had a chance to load and execute – meaning that they’d have to load a new HTML page. If the scripts were delivered in-line with the page, there would be no additional request, and they could execute right away. Because the successive content was to be loaded with JSON, concerns about caching the scripts and styles separately from the page were moot. We set about extending Razorfish.Web so that it could now insert the combined and compressed contents of script and style files directly into the page. By moving the scripts and styles in-line, we shaved off about 50% of our load time, and the scripts were now executing quickly enough that the JSON navigation mattered again.
Smoke and mirrors
A final touch was to take advantage of Safari Mobile’s CSS animation capabilities. The iPhone supports hardware-accelerated CSS transitions and animations, meaning fast and reliable animation for your pages. We added a yellow-glow effect to buttons when pressed. The glow was not only visually appealing, but its gradual appearance also helped to distract the user for the duration of the load time of the successive content.
Success
The team managed to pull the web application together in time for launch, and the guide was a smashing success. Over the course of SXSW, sxsw.razorfish.com was visited by 2,806 people who spent an average of 10 minutes each on the site, typically viewed about 8 pages, and often came back for second and third visits. The site attracted a large amount of buzz on Twitter and was praised as the go-to guide for the conference.
When designing for mobile, speed is key. All of the components of the site, including the design, need to work together to connect the user to the content as quickly and as efficiently as possible. In such a hyper-focused environment, the user experience, graphic design, and technology need to be unified in supporting a shared goal.
By producing a responsive, reliable, easy-to-use, to-the-point, and locally-flavored guide to the city, the team succeeded in creating a memorable and positive impression of Razorfish at SXSW.