Re: Deflate is Superior to Gzip (edited post)

Yes, it is a wrapper around raw deflate. But that wrapper has a
checksum that has to be calculated which also takes time on the
server. If developers are taking time to optimize their CSS selector
chains they will probably take time for an optimization such as using
raw deflate over gzip.

Personally, I don't think it is risky to switch. But that is what the
compression test is trying to figure out. So far, RAW deflate IS
supported in all browsers and platforms tested when "deflate" is
present in the Content-Encoding request header.

Do you have any data on RAW deflate failing?

David Murdoch | Verve Studios, Co
ph: (407) 374-3003 | fx: (407) 696-3078 | e: david@vervestudios.co |
web: http://vervestudios.co



On Thu, Sep 16, 2010 at 12:41 PM, Bryan McQuade <bmcquade@google.com> wrote:
> Isn't gzip just a wrapper around raw deflate? So using raw deflate
> will save you a small fixed quantity of bytes (~25 bytes IIRC)?
>
> I'm with you that if we were designing HTTP from scratch it would make
> sense to pick raw deflate instead of gzip, but given that gzip is
> widely supported and used, and switching is potentially risky and
> saves only a handful of bytes per response, I'm not sure it's worth
> changing at this point.
>
> On Thu, Sep 16, 2010 at 10:30 AM, David Murdoch <david@vervestudios.co> wrote:
>> Sorry for the double post, the hyperlink in the first post was
>> pointing to the dev version on my machine. The hyperlink has been
>> corrected and now points to the production version of the test.
>> ---
>> Some very influential sources have been promoting the gzip compression
>> format as the end-all and be-all to our HTTP 1.1 compression needs;
>> some tout gzip as the superior compression format ("Gzip is the most
>> [...] effective compression method..." [source: Best Practices for
>> Speeding Up Your Website]). This, however, is not necessarily true.
>> There are 2 other compression formats commonly available for use on
>> the web.
>>
>> Research is currently being conducted at
>> http://www.vervestudios.co/projects/compression-tests/results.
>>
>> Feedback and comments are encouraged.
>>
>>
>

Received on Thursday, 16 September 2010 16:54:45 UTC