It's trivial to write a bit of PHP code that looks at the http accept-encoding header and choose to send either compressed or uncompressed data based on what you find there. However I'm in a special situation where I cannot serve dynamic content based on individual browser settings. I have a caching proxy in front of the app server and for performance reasons we don't send differing content based on browser preferences.
<br><br>I've been trying to figure out a way to detect if gzip compression is supported on the client side and then use that information to request either compressed or uncompressed js and css files.<br><br>The difference in file size really is impressive, starting at about 50% decrease in file size for small resources and improving to 70% decrease in file size as the resources get larger. Also, it allows you to use normal, non-packed js files with practically no difference in download size which makes debugging js *so* much easier. (by packing I mean something like
<a href="http://dean.edwards.name/packer/">http://dean.edwards.name/packer/</a>)<br><br>I've come up with a solution. It adds about 1.4k to the page weight, but in my use case saves over 20k. I've got a working example but would really appreciate a few extra eyes and any feedback. I've documented my proof of concept here and I'd love to hear your thoughts on it:
<a href="http://www.bearfruit.org/blog/2008/01/17/using-gzip-compressed-js-and-css-without-an-app-server">http://www.bearfruit.org/blog/2008/01/17/using-gzip-compressed-js-and-css-without-an-app-server</a><br clear="all">
<br>-- <br>Matthew Nuzum<br>newz2000 on freenode