Just an FYI on what people can expect to change regarding page payload, after upgrading from 4.x to 5.x

This is just comparing the payload of the standard Terms page in 4.9.5 and 5.4.4. That means it shows only text and has one container. This is using my own skin, which uses the light-weight NorthSky Menu. One 22kb logo jpg and 10 tiny png files totaling about 2kb are also included. Both are running on my own quadcore server. I'm using Firebug and PageSpeed to get the results.

4.9.5
Score: 79 out of 100
23 resources
239Kb uncompressed
95kb compressed
Full refresh cross-country: 2 seconds per page load
On server desktop: 300ms

5.4.4
Score 74 out of 100
30 resources
382kb uncompressed
148kb compressed
Full refresh cross-country: 3.5 seconds per page load
On server desktop: 520ms

Most of the increase is in additional script files, and it's quite a hit really.
I wonder if some of the items could be left unloaded unless they are specifically required?

In any case, that's all just for interest.
Rob

Rhys,
  Yes, Skin Widgets are definitely a hit on page load size since it essentially forces jQuery on every page.  Without Skin Widgets, you will only get jQuery on pages which contain a module specifically requesting jQuery.

There are definitely some additional optimizations that we need to put in place including minified versions of all core DNN javascript files.  This would definitely help keep page sizes down.

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Joe Brinkman
DNN Corp.

Anyway you can try this on the new 5.5 Beta?