Class Schedule

Web 100 Performance Profile

Early in the quarter, each student will pick five web sites from the Web 100 Performance Profile spreadsheet. Students fill out the spreadsheet by running YSlow on their five sites. Only one person can do a given web site. The first person to put their name in the "Student" column claims that web site. It would be smart to "stake out" your five sites by adding your name before running YSlow, otherwise, by the time you finish running YSlow someone else might have claimed the site. You can't claim sites until the homework is assigned in class (probably on 9/26).

To edit the spreadsheet, you need to be a member of the class' Google Group. (Go to http://groups.google.com/group/cs193h-hpws and "Apply for group membership".) If there aren't five web sites left, you can add more sites from the Alexa Top 500. (The spreadsheet will have more than 100 web sites, but we'll stick with the "Web 100" moniker.) Only add sites with acceptable content (no porn, pirated software, etc.).

At the end of the quarter, students will update the spreadsheet so we can see changes in the Web 100's performance profile.

Note: There is not necessarily any connection between the five web sites chosen here and the web site chosen for the Class Project.

Class Project: Improving a Top 100 Web Site

Each student will apply the performance best practices learned in class to a web site of their choice. Guidelines for selecting a web site follow.

• It already exists.
• It's popular (e.g., in the Alexa Top 100). This is preferred, but not required. For example, as an alternative the student could choose their personal web site or blog, or their company's web site, even though it's not in the Alexa Top 100.
• It has a fair degree of complexity. Craigslist would be a bad choice.
• It has room for improvement, i.e., a low YSlow grade. Google, with a YSlow score of 100, would be a bad choice. Google Code, currently a 66, would be a good choice.
• It's in English, so that others are more likely to be able to review it. Again, this is preferred but not required.
• It has acceptable content (no porn, pirated software, etc.).

Students will download the web site to a local server. You can do this, for example, by selecting File | Save Page As... in Firefox 3 and choosing the "Web Page, complete" type. The files can then be FTPed to a web server to recreate a consistent version of the selected web site. It might be necessary to modify the page to make it work, e.g., adding a BASE HREF tag to the page. The tricky part of this will be that some of the performance changes require modifying the web server configuration. If possible, the department will provide server access for hosting this content. If students have their own web hosting facilities, that can be used. We'll review this in class and further assistance will be provided during office hours.

Make sure to save a packet sniffer trace of the original web site, e.g., in HTTPWatch choose Save | Save... and select Http Watch Log File (*.hwl).

After each class, students will apply the best practices discussed to their project web site. For example, if the class discusses spriting images, the student will sprite appropriate images in the web site. Each improvement will be measured in terms of load time, # of requests, etc., for comparison to the baseline. Load time measurements will be attained using Hammerhead. The results will be recorded in a shared class spreadsheet. Each student should add their own sub-spreadsheet to the Web 100 spreadsheet.

It's okay if multiple people choose the same web site, but they must still work independently. It would be interesting to see if one person's performance improvements differed from another's, for the same web site.

Maintain a document that is a summary write-up of your improvements. Provide a link to this document from within your sub-spreadsheet. If it's a Google Doc, make sure to either publish it or add the professor and TA to the access list.

Grading

25%	Midterm Exam
25%	Final Exam (not inclusive)
40%	Class Projects, Homework
10%	Participation (asking & answering questions, making observations, etc.)