Chapter 7, "Avoid CSS Expressions," and instead, by using one-time expressions and event handlers, you can avoid the performance problems associated with CSS Expressions. Chapter 8, "Make JavaScript and CSS External," shows that because HTML documents with dynamic content are not always cached by the browser and JavaScript and CSS is, when you load them separate from the HTMP, your overall load times will increase.

Chapter 9, "Reduce DNS Lookups," explains how DNS (Domain Name System) works from your browser's perspective and how you can reduce the amount of time your pages spend doing DNS lookups. Chapter 10, "Minify JavaScript," is the practice of removing unnecessary characters from the code to reduce its size, and therefore its load time.

Chapter 11, "Avoid Redirects," examines the different kinds of redirects there are, and, how by reducing and/or removing them, you can speed up your page load times. Chapter 12, "Remove Duplicate Scripts," can increase load time. There are a number of reasons, duplication of scripts can happen. These need to be eliminated because duplication of scripts will slow down the load times.

Chapter 13, "Configure ETags," explains that the ETag (entity tags) headers thwart caching when a website is hosted on more than one server. In this chapter ETags are explained as is how they can be configured. Chapter 14, "Make Ajax Cacheable," shows that even though the performance rules in this book pertain to Web 2.0 as well, that this particular rule is really targeted at this new platform. Finally, chapter 15, "Deconstructing 10 Top Sites" examines the top 10 U.S. websites with regard to the rules and tool that are described in High Performance Web Sites.

I found High Performance Web Sites to be very enlightening. Because the author is a performance expert at a large scale company that has to be efficient, makes it all the more beneficial. Each of the 14 techniques is explained in easy to understand terms and they are really basic techniques that any website can benefit from.

High Performance Web Sites is an excellent guide for web developers who are looking to write optimized HTML. It is a useful book for every web developer whether you are running a small or large-scale site. I highly recommend this book for anyone involved in web development.