As Steve mentioned in his last post, we're still around. However, between Achievers, exams and the holidays I am still getting back into the swing of things. Our frigid and brutal winter is not exactly inspiring us to much poetic prose either, but we'll manage.
That having been said, I wanted to give a quick update on an upcoming improvement to front end, client side performance for the Quixtar site. As an architect, 95% of the time I'm concerned about performance on the back end and how the code will scale under load. Unfortunately performance issues on the browser can result in (from the user's perspective) equally slow load times. Our tests stress server side load but do not typically handle client side performance. As an example, a page may be processed on our servers in less than a second but take upwards of eight seconds to render on a user's browser. From the user's standpoint, it matters little if the server took eight seconds and rendering was one second - it's still the length of time they have to wait.
One thing we discovered during testing (using, et. al., the YSlow addon to Firefox) was an enormous amount (35+) of separate javascript and CSS file loads on any given page. This added a significant load time on the client for each page, but particularly the LOS area of the site. We've got a prototype solution that is set to go live sometime in February that should reduce client side load times in the LOS by an average of four seconds. It will affect virtually the entire site but the LOS is probably where it will be most noticeable because of the enormous amount of javascript/css required to render the LOS tree.
Anyways, hope you had great holidays and your weather is better than ours. We'll keep you posted on any new developments as they become available.
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About Brett Folkert
Occuption
I am a Software Architect at Quixtar. The nature of my job and our environment means I have to be fluent in many disparate technologies on a daily basis. I like to think of it as "controlled chaos". I constantly strive to improve our architecture and ensure that wherever possible the underlying technology is transparent to our users. You probably won't notice my handiwork unless you look at the system design, but behind the scenes a lot of thought and hard work goes into making the site perform to our standards.
Background
My IT experience prior to Quixtar was primarily in consulting. I have worked with the U.S. Navy, dotcom startups and Fortune 500 companies. I consulted for Amway in years past (technical lead on GBISLink) before joining the team here at Quixtar. I hold both Master's and Bachelor of Science degrees in Computer Science. My thesis on neural networking/satellite imagery was published in the International Journal of Remote Sensing.
Interests
I have passions for wine, mountain biking and ancient history. If you want to discuss Cicero over a fine Bordeaux, look no further. I'm also married with two precocious daughters whom I adore. As if work and family weren't enough to keep me busy, I'm also attending law school in the evening.