3 ms·

No, that solution requires that the client be able to accept gzip encoding. The problem is, the server needs to be able to read the incoming HTTP request to see

No, that solution requires that the client be able to accept gzip encoding. The problem is, the server needs to be able to read the incoming HTTP request to see if "gzip" is contained in the HTTP:Accept-encoding header and only serve the gzipped version if the answer is YES (and otherwise serve the non-gzipped version). Apache and most other servers do this easily. Amazon S3 and CloudFront do not. That article ignores this fact, and just always serves the gzipped version with the gzip header encoding, whether the client accepts it or not. This works for probably 90-95% of the time (or more), but for anyone with a non-trivial app, that's not good enough.

byoung2 16y ago
the server needs to be able to read the incoming HTTP request to see if "gzip" is contained in the HTTP:Accept-encoding header and only serve the gzipped version if the answer is YES You're wrong...this can be accomplished on the client side with Javascript, without ever involving server-side code: I upload a gzipped test file to S3/Cloudfront containing a single line that sets a flag (e.g. supportsGzip = true). I then include that script at the top of my HTML page. If the browser supports gzip, then that file gets read correctly, and the supportsGzip variable gets properly set to true. If the browser does not support gzip, the file is gibberish, and the flag does not get set. Throughout the rest of the file, I use that supportsGzip variable to determine which versions of other static files to load (e.g. if(supportsGzip) {document.write(script tag src = gzip path)})
- JangoSteve 16y ago
  Ah, I actually mis-read the article. Sorry, I'm wrong, you're right, that would work ;-) I guess the only situation this wouldn't work would be if the user's browser supports gzipping, but doesn't have javascript enabled, but then it'll just serve everything unzipped by default, so not a big deal at all. Also, it seems kind of a pain to have to do that if-statement throughout all of your javascripts, html, and stylesheets. But I'm sure you could probably create a javascript 1-liner that runs after everything else that just goes through and changes all the sources for you, so it might end up being even easier than our method.
  - byoung2 16y ago
    I'd be willing to bet that Amazon starts offering on the fly gzip within a year's time
    - cloudberryman01 16y ago
      Check out our blog post on how you can enable gzip for CloudFront using the GUI tool http://blog.cloudberrylab.com/2009/07/how-to-lower-your-amazon-s3-bills-with.html http://blog.cloudberrylab.com/2009/07/how-to-lower-your-amaz...
- aaronblohowiak 16y ago
  this increases latency.

byoung2 16y ago

the server needs to be able to read the incoming HTTP request to see if "gzip" is contained in the HTTP:Accept-encoding header and only serve the gzipped version if the answer is YES You're wrong...this can be accomplished on the client side with Javascript, without ever involving server-side code: I upload a gzipped test file to S3/Cloudfront containing a single line that sets a flag (e.g. supportsGzip = true). I then include that script at the top of my HTML page. If the browser supports gzip, then that file gets read correctly, and the supportsGzip variable gets properly set to true. If the browser does not support gzip, the file is gibberish, and the flag does not get set. Throughout the rest of the file, I use that supportsGzip variable to determine which versions of other static files to load (e.g. if(supportsGzip) {document.write(script tag src = gzip path)})

JangoSteve 16y ago
Ah, I actually mis-read the article. Sorry, I'm wrong, you're right, that would work ;-) I guess the only situation this wouldn't work would be if the user's browser supports gzipping, but doesn't have javascript enabled, but then it'll just serve everything unzipped by default, so not a big deal at all. Also, it seems kind of a pain to have to do that if-statement throughout all of your javascripts, html, and stylesheets. But I'm sure you could probably create a javascript 1-liner that runs after everything else that just goes through and changes all the sources for you, so it might end up being even easier than our method.
- byoung2 16y ago
  I'd be willing to bet that Amazon starts offering on the fly gzip within a year's time
  - cloudberryman01 16y ago
    Check out our blog post on how you can enable gzip for CloudFront using the GUI tool http://blog.cloudberrylab.com/2009/07/how-to-lower-your-amazon-s3-bills-with.html http://blog.cloudberrylab.com/2009/07/how-to-lower-your-amaz...
aaronblohowiak 16y ago
this increases latency.