css minification

[Steven Schveighoffer via Digitalmars-d]

On 1/16/15 4:26 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> On 1/16/15 1:13 PM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>> On 1/16/15 3:53 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>>> On 1/16/15 12:37 PM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>>>> On 1/16/15 12:40 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>>>>> I just added
>>>>> https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/770, which
>>>>> generates minified css files. This is because in the near future css
>>>>> files will become heftier (more documentation comments, more detailed
>>>>> styles etc).
>>>>>
>>>>> The disadvantage is that now one needs to be online to generate
>>>>> documentation. Thoughts?
>>>>
>>>> Almost all browsers support gzip transfer of files. You'd get much
>>>> better mileage with just gzipping the file.
>>>>
>>>> -Steve
>>>
>>> That's part of the protocol, right? We should be doing that anyway.
>>> Anyhow, the css is really hot and comments just add to it, compressed or
>>> not. -- Andrei
>>
>> I think this is way over-optimization.
>>
>> If the system already sends gzipped, I don't think any kind of
>> minification is going to improve enough to the point of justifying all
>> this.
>>
>> (Dons Walter hat): have you profiled to see how much it saves?
>
> Well good point. As of January two of the css files are in the top 3
> most trafficked files off of dlang.org, second only to favicon.ico.
> Loading css accounts for 12.78% of all dlang.org hits and 5.73% of all
> dlang.org bytes transferred. I'd say improvements would be measurable.

Well, this is looking at the wrong statistic. I don't care how much of 
the overall bandwidth it is, what I was asking is how much does the file 
shrink if you minify. Saving 1% file size isn't going to put any kind of 
dent in the traffic.

> BTW are there ways to compress favicon.ico better? It's #1 with 10.28%
> of all hits and 16.27% of all bytes transferred.

On an embedded product we have with a dead-simple web server, there is 
terrible network performance. Adding gzip support saved way more than 
minification ever could. But the best performance improvement was to add 
caching support to the server. Both the browser and the server have to 
cooperate there.

-Steve