GWT Performance Talk

Dietrich Kappe, Tuesday, December 4, 2007 @ 5:30 pm

Another talk that was really more about general Ajax performance, rather than GWT performance. I've done a bit of work here myself (see chapter 9), so I'm always looking for some new tips and tricks. Joel Webber did a manful job going through the usual suspects -- fewer HTTP requests, bundle images, compress your JavaScript, perceived performance and actual performance are two different things.

Maybe the biggest bombshell was his recommendation to use innerHTML to build large DOM structures; it was an order of magnitude faster in all browsers than direct DOM manipulation. While that recommendation seems reasonable, it makes the GWT abstraction even leakier.

Some more GWT specific perf recommendations:

• Use the DeferredCommand to split long running
• Immutable resource bundles that will let you use image bundles in CSS background images.

Some quotes:

"Our JavaScript doesn't gzip quite as much as others, because our JavaScript doesn't include as much redundant crap."

"We had a hard time measuring JavaScript compilation because it takes so little time on modern computers."

"Firebug is often wrong when it comes to network timing. It has led me down a rathole several times."

"HTTP requests are the most time consuming thing you will do. DOM manipulation is next."

Technorati Tags: gwt, ajax, performance

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