How Google Sped up Gmail 
May 14th, 2008
There was an interesting post today on the Gmail blog about how they got GMAIL to load faster, especially on slow connections.
A couple of the things they did were:
- Spriting – combining all the small graphics into a single image and using CSS background image placement to split out the individual icons.
- Request pooling – Combining together seperate XHR requests into a single large request and then parsing out the results.
- Cacheing – making more of the resource requests cacheable by the browser (JavaScript, CSS etc). That way when the user reloads the page, it doesn’t need to download the same resources over and over.
To help them with this task they used proxy trace tools like Fiddler, WireShark, and HTTPWatch. I think Firebug would have been a good option here too. Other things they could have done (and may have) are:
- GZip compression – compressing all your static resources with ZIP making them much smaller to transmit. This works on all major browsers these days.
- Conbining JS and CSS resources – By concatenating all your JavaScript and CSS resources into one, you reduce the number of requests needed and really speed up your site.
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This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 14th, 2008 at 12:35 pm and is filed under ajax, gmail, web development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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May 14th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
Hi,
I’m glad to hear that you have made changes, but my gmail has become a nightmare over the last 2 weeks and I can’t figure out why. Loading just cogitates and never finishes?! Is it me or you? I use Mozilla Firefox, is that the problem?
May 16th, 2008 at 5:54 am
Well, you are proposing things which are quite technical, and believe me, Gmail has become a slow downloading instrument both at home connection and office wire-less connection. Is there anything wrong ? Or are the connections bad, or has Yahoo become and remaind the powerful browser and hotmail has improved to such an extent that they both challenge the speed of GMAIL., Am sure some solutions can be discussed and explained for lay-men like us who are not so very tech. savy with computers, but still use them for the day to day purpose.
May 20th, 2008 at 7:09 am
[…] A couple of the things they did were: * Spriting – combining all the small graphics into a single image and using CSS background image placement to split out the individual icons. * Request pooling – Combining together seperate XHR requests into a single large request and then parsing out the results. * Cacheing – making more of the resource requests cacheable by the browser (JavaScript, CSS etc). That way when the user reloads the page, it doesn’t need to download the same resources over and over. To help them with this task they used proxy trace tools like Fiddler, WireShark, and HTTPWatch. I think Firebug would have been a good option here too. Other things they could have done (and may have) are: * GZip compression – compressing all your static resources with ZIP making them much smaller to transmit. This works on all major browsers these days. * Conbining JS and CSS resources – By concatenating all your JavaScript and CSS resources into one, you reduce the number of requests needed and really speed up your site. Source of the information […]
May 20th, 2008 at 10:37 am
[…] How Google Sped up Gmail […]