Page-Speed and garland-revisited

Someone recently pointed out to me that i should install Page-Speed for Firefox and fix some of the errors in my theme.

Here is what another site said about the plugin..

Attention all webmasters and web developers! Google wants to help you improve the performance of your web pages. This week, Google released a tool called Page Speed which is capable of identifying different ways to make your site or web pages run faster.

Page Speed is an open-source Firefox/Firebug add-on that Google has been using internally to improve the performance of their web pages. It supports Windows (XP and up), Mac OSX (x86 and PPC) and Linux (32-bit and 64-bit) operating systems. You must have Mozilla Firefox (3.0.4 or higher) and Firebug Firefox Add-on (1.3.3 or higher) installed on your computer before installation of Page Speed.

Once installed, this tool performs several tests to determine site’s web server configuration and front-end code. After the tests Page Speed offers suggestions on how to change your web pages in order to improve their performance. For example, Page Speed automatically optimizes images for you, giving you a compressed image that you can use immediately on your web site. It also identifies issues such as JavaScript and CSS loaded by your page that wasn’t actually used to display the page, which can help reduce time your users spend waiting for the page to download and display.

So, Page Speed will not only help you make your site run faster but will also keep visitors engaged with your site. By improving page load it can also reduce your bandwidth and hosting costs. In my view this tool is a must for all webmasters and web developers.

Page Speed evaluates performance of a web page, from the client point of view, which is typically measured as the page load time. In my view page load time is most crucial and as a webmaster or blogger, you must take it seriously. After all, who wants to visit web pages that takes forever to load? So, think from client point of view and use Page Speed to evaluate the performance of your site or blog.

Page Speed tests are based on a set of known best practices that enhances web page performance. After evaluation of your pages, Page Speed will give your specific tips and suggestions on how you can implement the front-end best practices to improve overall performance. The web performance best practices are also available in written form, which you can refer anytime during development of tweaking of your web pages. For further help regarding installation and use of Page Speed, the Webmaster Help Forum is always there to help you.

More info: http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/

So my score was pretty bad to start with, had to rewrite some of the code to add custom headers to cache images properly, and rewrite some of the css.

A new version of the theme will be following shortly, a new dropdown menu has been added already.

I may add the latest tweet thing i have going on this site, and configurable header image too before it gets released.