It makes sense that the first thing I should do is combine those javascript and css files. I certainly don't need 17 when 2 or 3 will do just fine. So, what I'm going to do is take all of my separate javascript files, open them up, and copy and paste the code into one large file. Yes, this makes editing a little more time ...
As I was redesigning this site, and preparing to redirect my domain to it - I decided that I would hold off on performing the optimization that is important to every website. Instead, I thought I would create a series of posts about the process - step by step so we can all witness how the site improves which each optimization performed. I'm going to try to go in the order presented by Yahoo and their YSlow firefox plugin, in order to present actual numbers related to the changes.
Currently, the site is totally unoptimized. I haven't removed redundant or unused styles from the CSS. The javascript isn't minified, its in the header, and each plugin is a ...
I ended up developing the omnitip jquery plugin because I needed something a little more robust than any of the other jquery based tooltips that I was able to find. There may or may not have been one that would have met my needs and I just didn't see it, but regardless I believe I benefited from the experience of building a jquery plugin, and hopefully you will benefit as well.
Omnitip is a tooltip plugin (you can see it at work on the homepage). What I THINK I have added to other tooltips in terms of functionality is: