Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
On Sun, Jul 20, 2003 at 02:36:38PM +0200, Timwi wrote:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
Wasting bytes where it's critical to make RC as small as possible for "complicated reasons" doesn't really convince me.
Could you please explain to me why you think it's critical to make RC as small as possible? Our biggest current problem is database performance, not bandwidth usage.
Because most people are using 56kbit modems and recent changes size is huge. It's not about server bandwidth at all.
A 56kbit modem can transmit 56 Kilobits per second! With TCP's ~3.8% overhead (let's exaggerate to 4% for simplicity), it means you can transmit 53.76 Kbit/sec = 6.72 KB/sec. The Recent Changes list as I see it now (last 50 changes) is 40.8 KB ... this would therefore, under perfect server performance, take almost exactly 6 seconds.
According to your own calculations, you can save up to 16.6% - that takes it down to very close to 5 seconds.
I'm not convinced this unnoticeable improvement is worth the hassle.
If you really want to make it as small as possible, then you should use gzip; once that is installed, using <em> vs. <i> won't make a difference.
It's not supported by too many browsers.
That doesn't matter. The server can detect when the browser accepts gzip (the Accept-Encoding HTTP header), so those that don't can still be served the pages non-gzipped. Besides, enough modern browsers support it.
Timwi