SuzyUK - 12:21 am on Mar 12, 2011 (gmt 0)

"Does pagespeed consider one "efficient" selector more "efficient" than others?

No, just whether it's deemed efficient or not, but back to the OP even if it's efficient it's quantity not quality ;) I'm fairly positive I would need to reduce my "inefficient" count to under 5 before that would have an overall score impact, but for the reasons explained above this is not only not possible it very likely a waste of time just to gain a point (actually after last nights debacle I might lose a point :o)

Although you have now moved to general optimisation techniques,

I haven't really deviated from the OP, or at least I didn't intend to.. I said I was going to use the opportunity to see what lurked beneath; in fact I landed where I instinctively thought I would, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that it is not worth looking for unused selectors.. that is what started me out on this and I'm happy.. I'm fed up with people looking for "unused selector" tools without knowing why they are.. like it's a cure-all or something.

The inefficient ones have made me think differently.. I could pretty much say they're not worth it either but they taught me something more, not that I can "beat them" but that I can USE them.. so that I can't say "shadow of a doubt" about them.. but nearly ;)

The chosen test page: On a well-known site, mostly text, reasonably well-written code. I'm still struggling to find a pagespeed definition for "interactive", and this one may not qualify. But it provides an opportunity to test whether "non-interactive" pages respond the same way as "interactive" pages.

interactive means that users interact with the page, sometimes to add content, sometimes to vote, sometimes to open a larger version of an image, (or as in the WebmasterWorld homepage.. what's up with that right now? 11s to get the page, I though BT thought that homepage load speed was more important than anything..thank goodness I never visit it that way! - all that to click a like button or to tweet it *shrug*)

all of these "interactive" functions should not impact the page load, they could be deferred if necessary - it's highly unlikely you are going to want to add content/vote/view image until the actual page is available for you to click on !

So my lesson was .. my gut instinct is still correct, I knew this already it was common sense.. I just needed to see how some parts acted with others and that means yes I'm still going to rant about the misleading PS and Y!slow warnings as they are not at all apparent, and they are misleading.. or if you do visit their "help" pages you will get lost in double-speak (George Orwell would be proud)

alt, I'd love to hear if you can prove the weighting one way or another, but I think swa has it.. it exists.. and they'll change their "algo" to suit once they realise that some parts are useless (I actually think they have already in the built in FF addon all is not the same as it was) and unless we want to start becoming like the like the SE Update threads , my guess, and now a semi-informed opinion, is that it's just not worth it