Today we'll be pushing out the last of the code that completes the optimization work we started over a month ago. This last portion of code is a substantial rewrite of the JavaScript that Zoto uses to display pages on the site, and will finish up our work on speeding things up.

Before today, each time you went to a new page on the site your browser would have to re-read the JavaScript we use on the site from your browser's cache. Because of the size of the code we use, some user's browsers were slowed down by this reading in and parsing of the JS code. The changes we have made to the site now allow your browser to redraw the different pages without having to reload the JS each time, which effectively cuts down page draw times. The net effect of these changes are that pages now 'pop' in almost immediately, with no discernible delay in moving from page to page.

There are some caveats to this approach. First, the forum, blog, albums and image editing pages will not participate in the speed boosts. If you navigate to one of these pages and then back to the site, there will still be a small delay as your browser reloads the JS it needs to draw the page itself. However, these pages are used by the users infrequently at best, and should not appear to be making things 'slower' than they already were before today.

Even though we have tested this extensively on both development and staging, there will be some bugs that appear as a result of these code changes. As always, we remain committed to addressing these bugs in a timely fashion, and expect to have any issues resolved by early next week at the latest.

Our work now shifts to focusing on album features, including ways to secure your albums, creating new templates for use on albums, and beginning work on the community sections of the site.

Please post in the forums if you see anything out of the ordinary with these changes, or want to comment on any speed boosts you may see!