Fixing issues found in Firebug

[sarina28]

I used Firebug for the first time. It's very detailed. I ran my latest website through it, and I got an average score of 84 out of a 100. The issues it listed are as follows:

 

URL: ww w.arjaysup holstery.c om

 

Red Flags

Leverage browser caching

Parallelize downloads across hostnames

Serve static content from a cookieless domain

 

Cautions

Avoid bad requests

Combine external CSS

Combine external JavaScript

Specify a Vary: Accept-Encoding header

 

1) I've not delt with any of the red flag issues before. Suggestions? Help Please!

 

2) Not sure how I can improve on the caution issues. The bad requests are images that don't exsist on my server, and I cleared the cache. The images are:

 

· /images/body/menu.png

· /images/body/plyers-hogrings.gif

· /images/body/push-pins.png

· /images/body/wood-plank.gif

 

3)I have a reset, screen and a font style sheet. I see that a lot of designers keep those seperate. Is it a good idea to combine all of them?

 

4) I have .js files for my javascripts. I've never combined all in one .js before. I'm sure I can work through that one.

 

5)I not sure what they mean by this "Specify a Vary: Accept-Encoding header"

 

 

Thanks for you help.

 

 

 

 

 

 

URL: ww w.arjaysup holstery.c om

[falkencreative]

I'm assuming you are talking about YSlow, which is a plugin for Firebug that Yahoo created? (or something similar?)

 

Others may be able to chime in here... but my impression is that a lot of the criteria that the plugin looks at are more important for large, high traffic sites, and less for small sites. Some of the things the plugin suggests you look at may not offer any significant performance boosts -- at least not for a small, relatively low traffic website.

 

That said, it seems there are a couple areas that could be improved:

 

-- make sure there aren't any bad links to outside websites or internal resources such as images, js or css files, etc.

-- reduce the number of files that the server has to access, which means reducing if possible the number of CSS and Javascript files

 

"Decreasing the number of components on a page reduces the number of HTTP requests required to render the page, resulting in faster page loads. Some ways to reduce the number of components include: combine files, combine multiple scripts into one script, combine multiple CSS files into one style sheet, and use CSS Sprites and image maps."

 

Beyond those changes, I wouldn't worry too much about it. If you have any questions regarding specific criteria, I'm sure a Google search or two will give you some additional clarification.