Re: Performance implications of Bundling and Minification on HTTP/1.1

On 23/06/2012, at 10:42 AM, Mike Belshe wrote:

> 
> 
> On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 5:10 PM, Roy T. Fielding <fielding@gbiv.com> wrote:
> HTTP predates gzip and cookies. The notion that such a choice had anything to do with optional features is just silly. It is optional because it barely even worked in practice until 1999 and certainly wasn't feasible as a default until a few years after that as CPU capability increased.
> 
> I'm sorry if this offends - it wasn't intended as a dig against HTTP. 
> 
> The point is that the #1 performance impact in this test was compression, which optional in HTTP, and that optional features are not used as widely as they could be.

It's actually very widely deployed among browsers.

The issue isn't that it's optional, the issue is that because it's negotiated, some intermediaries disable the negotiation to make application of policy easier. 

We can have a discussion about whether or not we want to prioritise performance over these use cases, but let's not kid ourselves that it's as simple as "optional = bad." Sometimes there are good reasons to make something optional.

Cheers,

--
Mark Nottingham   http://www.mnot.net/

Received on Saturday, 23 June 2012 01:35:40 UTC