vonloesch.de

Sourceforge is a site I am visiting quite frequently but which is sooo slow, that it is a pain. I always thought, that their servers didn't scale with the growing count of visitors, but I also found another thing, which has a huge impact of the speed of the site. Take a look at the head section of a typical sf page:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://static.sourceforge.net/css/sfx.php?secure=0&20070612-2245" media="screen" title="SFx" />
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://static.sourceforge.net/css/cca.php?secure=0&20070612-2245" media="screen" />
<script type="text/javascript">
	//<![CDATA[
                var link = document.createElement('link');
                link.setAttribute('rel', 'stylesheet');
                link.setAttribute('type', 'text/css');
                link.setAttribute('href', 'http://static.sourceforge.net/css/sfxjs.php?secure=0&20070612-2245');
                document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(link);
                function help_window(helpurl) {
                        HelpWin = window.open( 'http://sourceforge.net' + helpurl,'HelpWindow','scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,toolbar=no,height=400,width=400');
                }
	//]]>
        </script>
        <script type="text/javascript" src="http://static.sourceforge.net/include/thickbox/jquery.js"></script>
        <script type="text/javascript" src="http://static.sourceforge.net/include/thickbox/goods.js"></script>
        <script type="text/javascript" src="http://static.sourceforge.net/include/thickbox/service.js"></script>
        <script type="text/javascript" src="http://static.sourceforge.net/include/js/Util.js"></script>
        <script type="text/javascript" src="http://static.sourceforge.net/include/services/sf.js"></script>
        <script type="text/javascript" src="http://static.sourceforge.net/include/services/query_string.js"></script>
        <script type="text/javascript" src="http://static.sourceforge.net/include/services/location.js"></script>
        <script type="text/javascript" src="http://static.sourceforge.net/include/services/SfTable.js"></script>
        <script type="text/javascript" src="http://static.sourceforge.net/include/services/form_helper.js"></script>
        <script type="text/javascript" src="http://static.sourceforge.net/include/services/duration_editor.js"></script>
        <script type="text/javascript" src="http://static.sourceforge.net/include/services/terms_and_conditions.js"></script>
	<script type="text/javascript" src="http://static.sourceforge.net/include/thickbox/thickbox.js"></script>
	<script type="text/javascript" src="http://static.sourceforge.net/include/thickbox/dialog.js"></script>
	<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://static.sourceforge.net/include/thickbox/thickbox.php?secure=0&20070612-2245" media="screen" title="SFx" />
        <!--[if IE]><link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="http://static.sourceforge.net/css/iestyles.php?secure=0&20070612-2245"  /></script>

All in all the browser loads at least 5 stylesheets and 14! javascript files. Especially on the first load, this takes a very long time and they all need to be loaded prior the site can be rendered. Furthermore the scripts are all at the same host and normally the browser doesn't load more than two files parallel from the same host (Http spec: A single-user client SHOULD NOT maintain more than 2 connections with any server or proxy).
If you take a look at the end of the page there are around 7 Ad-scripts which are also loaded.

Tools like Yslow could help to find such flaws maybe the guys at sf should give them a try.