14 DAY TRIAL // Yahoo has unveiled YSlow for Mobile, a version of its website performance tool designed for mobile devices and browsers. The new tool works very much like the desktop version, it runs a series of tests and evaluates performance of any site, giving you a score as well as pointers on how to improve your performance. It is very similar to Google's Page Speed which can also be used for mobile browsing performance.
"Yahoo! announced the launch of YSlow for Mobile, which brings YSlow’s web performance analysis to the mobile platform for the first time," Yahoo announced.
"YSlow for Mobile analyzes your mobile web site performance, and suggests ways to make mobile web pages load faster – right in your mobile device. It is a bookmarklet – an unobtrusive JavaScript program stored in a browser’s bookmarks menu. This version works in browsers that support bookmarklet and JavaScript," the announcement explained.
To use the new YSlow for Mobile, all you have to do is visit the redesigned YSlow website and go to the mobile section. There, you will be able to add the YSlow bookmarklet to your browser's bookmarks section and then run it from there.
You can either bookmark page and then edit the URL so that only the JavaScript code remains or create a new bookmark and copy the code yourself. Since this is just a bit of JavaScript, it will work with any browser that can run it from a bookmark, be it mobile or desktop.
At the moment, most of the suggestions after running the tests are general, they don't focus on mobile devices necessarily, but the new tool is still in beta and Yahoo will add more helpful suggestions later.
"The official YSlow site has been redesigned. A new section is the YSlow Scoremeter – the place to view shared YSlow results submitted by YSlow Social. You can use this page to estimate how each rule will impact overall YSlow score," Yahoo also announced.