Dean Hume

Web Performance

HTTP vs HTTPS performance comparison

Google recently announced that they will be starting to use HTTPS as a ranking signal in their search algorithms. This means that websites that serve traffic over HTTPS with secure, encrypted connections will be slightly favoured over those websites that don't. During Google I/O, there was a big push

Programming

Convert JSON to a C# Class

As a web developer, I regularly write code to consume and create data in a JSON format. It's a simple and easy way to represent data as a string and if you work with JSON every day, you'll know how much easier it is to use than XML. If you

Speaking

I'll be speaking at Velocity Conference New York 2014

Velocity Conference is without a doubt one of my favourite conferences of the year. It's the conference where different topics such as DevOps, web operations, web performance, and mobile explode into being. Packed with some of the best speakers in the industry; it's a great place to learn and network.

ASP.NET

What is the difference between Build and Rebuild in Visual Studio?

If you are a developer that uses Visual Studio as your IDE, you will be familiar with the Build and Rebuild tasks. I regularly write code in Visual Studio and am used to hitting the Build command when I am developing, but have often wondered what is actually happening under

CSS

Loading CSS Asynchronously

When it comes to web page performance, the size and weight of every resource on the page is important. Large JavaScript and CSS files can slow down your page load times and frustrate your users. There are a number of techniques for loading JavaScript asynchronously and many different techniques for

Content Delivery Networks: Which one is right for you?

This article originally appeared in issue 232 of net magazine. It also appeared on their site, but as they moved domains and lost the content, I thought I'd post it on here. I hope you find this article useful! Imagine if I told you that you could drastically increase the

Web Performance

The Ultimate Image Optimization Cheat Sheet

Images play a massive role in modern web development today. They comprise of around 62% of the average page’s total payload, which is an astonishing amount! In terms of web page performance, images can be a huge performance roadblock, but they don't have to be. Simple image optimization techniques

Programming

Visual Studio - Why should I remove unused references?

When it comes to writing code, I like everything to be neat and follow a certain set of coding guidelines. I like to adhere to the principle that I always code as if the next person who ends up maintaining my code is a violent psychopath who knows where I

Web Performance

Automatically removing unused CSS using Grunt

I have previously blogged about the importance of keeping your web pages lean and the impact that unused CSS can have on your page performance. Apart from causing cluttered files, unused CSS can can slow down page load times due to the unnecessary weight of the file. Google Chrome developer

ASP.NET

Validating email addresses in .NET - Handy Tip

If you've ever written any code that sends emails before, I'm pretty sure that you've had to validate the email addresses that are entered by users. Email address validation can be tricky at the best of times and with international domain names in email addresses, almost anything is possible. In

Web Performance

Remove unused CSS in your Web Application

I've previously blogged about my CSS skills and to be honest - they suck! I normally resort to using pre-rolled frameworks such as Twitter's Bootstrap, Foundation or TopCoat. These frameworks are really useful and their components help you get the basics of your UI up and running in no time.

ASP.NET

Extending System.Web.Optimization

The ASP.NET framework is packed with loads of great features and with each release it seems to get better and better. One of my favourite features is the bundling and minification classes that optimize JavaScript and CSS files in a website to reduce file size and improve page performance.

IIS

IIS - Resource interpreted as Font but transferred with MIME type application/x-font-woff

If you take a look at websites such as Medium, SquareSpace and Information Architects, it's clear that great typography can really enhance the look of a website. Web fonts are a great way to introduce typography to your website and can be added in a matter of minutes. Adding a

ASP.NET

Working with multiple Web.Config files

When dealing with multiple development environments, it can often be quite tricky to keep track of the different environment specific settings that you may have in place. Fortunately, Visual Studio has a handy feature that allows you to have more than one Web.Config file for different environments. I have

Speaking

Velocity Conference Europe 2013 is a wrap!

Another year, another great conference. This year's Velocity Conference in Europe was packed with loads of great talks and tutorials. Velocity Conference is three great days of concentrated focus on the key aspects of web performance, operations, and mobile performance. If you are interested in web performance or developer operations,

Web Performance

I'll be speaking at Velocity Europe 2013

Velocity Conference is my favourite conference of the year. There is always a host of great speakers and it's packed with awesome web performance topics. If you aren't familiar with Velocity Conference, it is three great days of concentrated focus on the key aspects of web performance, operations, and mobile

Web Development

Improved tracking with the <a ping> attribute - HTML5

As I sit down at my desk each working morning, the first thing I do is fire up the ever faithful feedly and read through the days' tech news with a cup of coffee. During my usual morning reading, I came across this interesting update from Ilya Grigorik on Google+

Book

Fast ASP.NET Websites Competition - Results

The results are in! Thank you to all the people who entered the competition and tweeted about the book. The competition closed on the night of the 22th October 2013, and the number of entries was fantastic. I can reveal that the following people were chosen at random using random.

Programming

Slides - Interviews: Stand out from the Crowd

I've spent a lot of time in interviews during my career as a software developer. Whether it involves being interviewed, or spending time interviewing new candidates, the career searching process has always interested me. I recently wrote an article for Smashing Magazine which talked about the different steps that you

Web Performance

A Simple HTML Minifier for ASP.NET

I have previously blogged about the importance of serving your users web pages with speedy load times. Poor web performance equals lost revenue and customers. As you continue to build and improve on the web performance of your site, you will need to look for ingenious ways to squeeze those

ASP.NET

Fast ASP.NET Websites Book Giveaway

Fast ASP.NET Websites has just been released, and if you haven't already gotten your hands on a copy, I have 3 free copies to give away. Fast ASP.NET Websites is a practical, hands-on guide to create faster, more efficient ASP.NET sites and applications. This book offers step-by-step

ASP.NET

Get the number of users that are online using SignalR

In a recent experiment, I was looking for a way to retrieve the number of online users in an ASP.NET application. There are a number of techniques that can be applied, such as incrementing based on ASP.NET session state, or using Google Analytics to keep track of active

Web Development

Fast ASP.NET Websites has been released!

A rather large and suspicious looking box arrived at my house yesterday. To my surprise, it was the first few copies of Fast ASP.NET websites. These have just rolled fresh off the press courtesy of Manning! If you aren't familiar with the contents of the book, it is a

ASP.NET

ASP.NET MVC HTML5 Toolkit Update - August 2013

There have been a number of major updates released with the latest version of the MVC HTML5 Toolkit. You, the community have been great, and the majority of the patches and enhancements have been added via the Codeplex site. If you aren't familiar with the MVC HTML5 Toolkit, it is

ASP.NET

ASP.NET Release Checklist

Whenever I work on side projects or make updates to this blog, I like to run a few simple checks to make sure that the site is ready before I release it. When working on side projects, you might not have the benefit of having someone else to help test,