Web users do not want to wait a long time for a Web page to load. The major search engines are no different from the Web users; they do not want to wait for pages to load. Page loading time is an important issue for webmasters and its importance increases as competition grows fiercer and large data centers play important role in delivering Web content.
Tools for measuring page load time are many of wide variety. The latest trend is very visible in modern Web browsers that either have analysis tools inside the browser or as a plugin. The Web browser is the perfect place for Web site analysis tools on a per-page basis. Analyzing an entire large-scale Web site requires other tools and other measures.
The new Google Chrome Web browser has a fantastic inspection tool for HTML, CSS and JavaScript elements and code blocks in addition to a time measurement and resource tool. The HTML inspection tool is a big helper in identifying attributes and underlying code blocks and page elements.
The Firebug add-on for the Firefox Web browser has become invaluable for many webmasters. It has a variety of tools that help you debug and even edit HTML, CSS and JavaScript code. It has a network monitor that measures Web page loading time in details making it easy to identify where the Web site performance obstacles might reside in your code.
Some already know and use the YSlow add-on alongside Firebug. YSlow requires the Firebug add-on. The YSlow add-on ranks Web site performance based on certain rules and gives valuable clues on how to optimize your Web site for maximum performance.