High Performance Images: Shrink, Load, and Deliver Images for Speed

by Colin Bendell, Tim Kadlec, Yoav Weiss

High-quality images have an amazing power of attraction. Just add some stunning photos and graphics to your website or app and watch your user engagement and conversion numbers climb. It can be tricky, but with this practical guide, you'll master the many facets of delivering high performance images on the internet--without adversely affecting site performance.

You'll learn the nuts and bolts of color theory, image formats, storage and management, operations delivery, browser and application behavior, the responsive web, and many other topics. Ideal for developers, this book also provides useful tips, tricks, and practical theory for processing and displaying powerful images that won't slow down your online product.


Explore digital image theory and the different formats available
Dive into JPEGs, SVG and vector images, lossless compression, and other formats
Use techniques for downloading and rendering images in a browser, and for loading images on mobile devices and cellular networks
Examine specific rendering techniques, such as lazy loading, image processing, image consolidation, and responsive images
Take responsive images to the next level by using content negotiation between browser and server with the Client Hints HTTP standard
Learn how to operationalize your image workflow
Contributors include Colin Bendell, Tim Kadlec, Yoav Weiss, Guy Podjarny, Nick Doyle, and Mike McCall from Akamai Technologies.

Genres: Technology

354 pages, ebook

Published November 3, 2016

Reviews

[Lucy Batson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very readable, despite lots of "in the weeds" details about what goes into various image formats and what makes them tick. I'd love to see an updated version (this is five years old at the time of writing this review), that's expanded with some opinionated approaches for front-end developers: "lazy load if you can" and "size images appropriately" aren't exactly major revelations for anybody at this point.

[Vicky Thrasher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really well organized and talked about a lot of things I would consider to be previous unknown unknowns. Even though I know I didn't absorb everything I feel like I absorbed enough to convert the unknown-unknowns to at least known-unknowns and there were definitely things that became known-knowns. I was a little hesitant going into this book expecting it to feel fairly dated since it was published in 2016 and I read it in 2024 but I really think it has held up so far except for a few details. I was really pleased seeing that it covered WebP because I know that is a newer format.