HTTP Performance and Versioned URLs 0
Tenni Theurer at Yahoo has published a blog post detailing performance characteristics of typical HTTP page loads. While the article itself doesn't present any groundbreaking information (I've got high hopes for part 2, however), it does validate one important point:
Our experience shows that reducing the number of HTTP requests has the biggest impact on reducing response time
That's what the Versioned URLs plugin is all about.
Many people have the mistaken impression that browser caching reduces HTTP requesets- it doesn't, at least not usually. What it does do is reduce wire traffic. Versioned URLs are about not just shortening the HTTP transaction, but entirely eliminating it.
I'm definitely looking forward to Part 2 of Tenni's post to see what they recommend. Things like file aggregation (where multiple js or css files are aggregated into a single file) can help, but, ultimately, I can't see any incremental improvement beyond eliminating the entire HTTP request.
