Under the Hood: Two Performance Improvements
It's easy to see the dramatic changes in the new Beta Library. Others may have noticed how the short URL (e.g. http://screencast.com/t/RaNd0M) stays short once entered into the address bar. It used to redirect to the full content URL.
Anyway, if you're into "invisible" performance-related facts, you might be interested in a post from Jared Wein's blog. Jared worked on Screencast.com for a short time and made significant contributions.
The latest Screencast.com release included a couple speed improvements that were quietly included.
URL improvements
The first improvement was one requested by Kyle Mulka, of Twilk, [among others] during a visit to TechSmith. Kyle mentioned that he wished the Screencast.com short URLs would stay short after the web page was accessed. He mentioned that a lot of users like to copy and paste the URL from the address bar and use it in tweets.
I spent a bit of time researching what we would have to change to fix this issue, and in a couple of days we had the changes implemented.
This change also brings about a nice speed improvement to the loading of pages on Screencast.com. Previously, when a piece of content was visited, the server would reply with an HTTP Status Code 302 - Found. This causes the browser to then load the page at the redirected location. This little bit of communication takes time, and with our new change we have removed this initial hurdle.
Here is a graphic showing the change in loading times:
With this improvement, we have increased the speed of viewing your Screencast.com content by 4.1% on average. If you are viewing your content from outside of North America, you can expect an even larger speedup. [We know it's not a large speed increase, but every bit helps, right?]
Reduced page size
The second [and more noticeable] improvement that was added to Screencast.com was a new library layout. Much care has been taken to reduce the filesize of the webpages, to the point where loading up my library using the Library (beta) only uses 1/4 of the bytes yet sends more data. The Library (beta) also makes 11 less network requests than the current library. This means that your Screencast.com library is now more accessible under tighter network conditions such as 3G.
I want to thank Kyle making the request, and you for spending the time to make a very nice improvement on url performance.
url performance improvements are always great and a must have! thanks for this interesting article.
Streamlining the process in every way can only drive this screen casting industry forward. I happen to have CPR training in the Dallas area and screen casting is sometimes a requirement. Keep going.
So this issue is fixed, right? My sister and I are hoping to work on some custom Christmas cards and need to have a reliable way to share our ideas back and forth with each other.
I just happened upon screencast when looking for a way to share image files as well as presentation videos. It seems like an interesting solution, but since we are talking about designs, I can't have any bugs disrupting clarity, layout, and certainly can't endure a dreaded "page not found" as both of our time is limited to work on this project.
Since this entry is a few months old, I'll see if there is a newer blog post with an update on product stability. Thanks!
Hi Karoline,
You should be good to go with Screencast.com. We've got a new "Beta" view too.
We don't alter your content in any way, so if you share an 1800x2500 pixel image or whatnot with your sister, it will remain that size and quality.
Good luck and let us know how it goes!
Mike Curtis