last update : 20 August 2012
Compression is a simple, effective way to save bandwidth and speed up a website. The browser sends a header telling the server it accepts compressed content (Accept-Encoding: gzip ; Accept-Encoding: deflate). The server sends a response if the content is actually compressed: Content-Encoding: gzip. If the server doesn’t want to send back compressed content, the browser has to make do with the heavy regular version.
A webserver can be configured (in the settings or in the .htaccess file) to return zipped content if the browser can handle it, saving bandwidth for everyone. If you use the Amazon AWS S3 service as a webserver, you can upload compressed files in the AWS management console and add a metatag
Content-Encoding: gzip
in the HTTP header of the files.
I use the WinGZip utility (version 1) created by Irnis Haliullin to compress the content uploaded to my Amazon AWS S3 buckets. An online tool GIDZip Test to check compressed websites is available at gidnetwork.com.
Some useful documentation about Gzip compression is listed herafter :
- How To Optimize Your Site With GZIP Compression by betterexplained.com
- Static gzip is your best friend by Nikolay Matsievsky
- Minimize payload size by Google
- Going beyond gzipping – Is it still relevent these days?, by Avi Keinan