This is the first in a series of articles describing experiments
conducted to learn more about optimizing web page performance.
You may be wondering why you’re reading a performance article on
the YUI Blog. It turns out that most of web page performance is
affected by front-end engineering, that is, the user interface
design and development. It’s no secret that users prefer faster
web sites. I work in a dedicated team focused on quantifying and
improving the performance of Yahoo! products worldwide. As part
of our work, we conduct experiments related to web page
performance. We are sharing our findings so that other front-end
engineers join us in accelerating the user experience on the
web. Vilfredo Pareto, an economist in the early 1900s, made a
famous observation where 80% of the nation’s wealth belonged to
20% of the population. This was later generalized into what’s
commonly referred to as the Pareto principle (also known as the
80-20 rule), which states for any phenomenon, 80% of the
consequences come fr