w3c validation

I shouldn't need reminding about this.

Today, a tester showed me the validation report on a site I've been working on. Ouch!

Check your html here: http://validator.w3.org/

Add this as unit testing in the dev process.

Performance list

When approaching a new website launch, make sure you run through the Day performance & security checks.

http://dev.day.com/content/docs/en/cq/current/deploying/performance.html

CRX hotfixes

When approaching any new project, always ensure you have the CRX hotfixes installed. CRX v2.1.0.10 at least (although, there is 2.1.0.13 available).

NB, CRX hotfixes are cumulative - so you can just installv the latest one.

XSS Protection Service

The XSS Protection service in CQ v5.3 is great. However, having problems with it clashing with the xerces XML parser. From looking at the error on forum posts, it probably should not contain the xml apis package inside it's bundle.

Think I'll need to raise a Day Care ticket for this one.

Browser Bookmarks

I have created a very useful way to store my CQ environment bookmarks so that any system is easily accessible.

Create a folder in the Bookmarks Toolbar for each Environment. E.g.

Dev/ Sit/ UAT/ Perf/ Live/ Educ/

Then, in each environment, create a set of sub folders for CRX, Felix, etc...

Live/
CRX/ Felix/ Publish HTML/ Logs/ System Status/

Then put bookmarks to all of your CRX instances, for that environment, under the CRX folder, etc...

The beauty of this is that in browsers (Firefox 3.5 at least) you can quickly navigate to the "Live/CRX" folder and select "open all in tabs". Gaining fast access to Content Explorer when you have to go and look in multiple instances.

HTML page construction standards for performance

Started off with a page in my local dev environment. Jmeter script to fire 10 threads & make a total of 50 requests. All times in milliseconds.

First run:-
Ave: 765 90%:859 Max: 880

Combined 10 javascript files in to 1.
Second run:-
Ave: 653 90%:729 Max: 877

Minified the combined javascript file.
Third run:-
Ave: 610 90%:685 Max: 697

Moved the Omniture stuff to the bottom of the page (just before the usual "scripts.jsp" is included).
Fourth run:-
Ave: 554 90%:564 Max: 576

2 Development Standards to be adopted
Combine most of your javascripts in to 1 file.
Minify that javascript file.
Leave Omniture until last! (Preferably with an Ajax request onload).

Improving performance with browser caching

On requests, check that you are using browser caching.

Last-Modified should be set.
Expires should be set (seems to be dynamically set if max-age is set on cache-control).
On cache-control - watch out for must-revalidate - this seems to bypass the cache.

This is not good:-
Cache-Control max-age=0

This is OK:-
Cache-Control max-age=1800, public, must-revalidate

NB, public is to allow caching on SSL links.

This is BEST:-
Cache-Control max-age=18000, public

Are the flash files cached?