Don't bother saving white-space

[Stephen Poley]

People in these groups, and on web-pages, not infrequently suggest that
it is worthwhile cutting down on white-space and comments in HTML and
CSS in order to reduce loading times. I and others have more than once
doubted this, given the data-compression in the HTTP protocol. Having
seen it suggested again a couple of times in the last few days, I
decided it was time for a test on the effect of white-space.

I took one of my pages:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/webmatters/checklist.html
which is 20 Kb.

I then bloated it with whitespace to 162 Kb (nothing special about that
number - it's just what it happened to end up as):
http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/misc/checklist.html

I tested them over my 46 Kbps modem connection (yes: 46, not 56; don't
ask - I don't know either) using Opera 7.

The first page loads in 3 seconds, the second in 8 seconds - both
figures seem to be repeatable. This suggests that if you took a file
with a fairly generous 5Kb of white-space, and stripped out all of it,
loading would be speeded up by a princely one-sixth of a second. (For
comparison, the largest HTML file on my site, of 79Kb, turned out to
have just under 3Kb of compressible white-space.)

Somehow it just doesn't seem worth it ...

--
Stephen Poley

http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/webmatters/

[Jan Roland Eriksson]

On Fri, 20 Aug 2004 18:32:34 +0200, Andreas Prilop
<nh******@rrz n-user.uni-hannover.de> wrote:

On Fri, 20 Aug 2004, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:

I don't see why you would use tabs,

Because a tab says more than 1000 spaces - so to speak ;-)
I save lots of space characters for a single tab.

This discussion is moot, please end?

--
Rex

[Jan Roland Eriksson]

On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 20:55:33 +0100, Spartanicus <[e-mail] > wrote:

Stephen Poley <sb************ ******@xs4all.n l> wrote:

People in these groups, and on web-pages, not infrequently suggest that
it is worthwhile cutting down on white-space and comments in HTML and
CSS.

I have never seen that, but I have seen a lot of trolls in my life.
I'd suggest that whitespace and comments are 2 different things.

I'd suggest that it's about time for _all_ of you "youngsters " out here
in this NG to put your back to it and go on to present a decent article
that describes solid results from studies you have made.

all the best...

--
Rex

[Karl Groves]

"Stephen Poley" <sb************ ******@xs4all.n l> wrote in message
news:0m******** *************** *********@4ax.c om...

People in these groups, and on web-pages, not infrequently suggest that
it is worthwhile cutting down on white-space and comments in HTML and
CSS in order to reduce loading times. I and others have more than once
doubted this, given the data-compression in the HTTP protocol. Having
seen it suggested again a couple of times in the last few days, I
decided it was time for a test on the effect of white-space.

I think that a far bigger problem, in terms of download times, is in the use
of presentational elements and attributes.[1]
In fact, I was recently charged with helping one of our clients (a large
gov't entity) decrease the file size of their pages. It seems like these
folks have never even heard of CSS. A typical page for them contains 8
nested tables (3-4 deep. I've seen up to 6-deep on their pages with forms)
and all presentation with HTML. NO CSS with exception of typography. Some of
their pages are 100kb+ of HTML alone. With images, they can get to 200kb
fast.
I'm not done with the project, but I'm guessing I can get them into the
15-25kb range and still keep their exact look & feel.
[1] - bigger, as it relates to this NG. The biggest problem, of course, is
images

-Karl

[Dr John Stockton]

JRS: In article <cg**********@n gspool-d02.news.aol.co m>, dated Sun, 22
Aug 2004 08:23:33, seen in news:comp.infos ystems.www.authoring.html,
Karl Groves <ka**@NOSPAMkar lcore.com> posted :

In fact, I was recently charged with helping one of our clients (a large
gov't entity) decrease the file size of their pages. It seems like these
folks have never even heard of CSS. A typical page for them contains 8
nested tables (3-4 deep. I've seen up to 6-deep on their pages with forms)
and all presentation with HTML. NO CSS with exception of typography. Some of
their pages are 100kb+ of HTML alone.

What would the size of an approximately 800*600 GIF, PNG, or whatever of
such a page be? I tested with about enough plain text (from a Web page)
to fill a printed page, and that was under 19kB as a GIF. A GIF of
proposed garden changes is here 5-6kB; about and has as much structure
as a Web page needs.

Granted, for some users it will not fill the screen; on the other hand,
all[*] who see it will see it very much as the designer intended.
[*] Well, all with colour screens and sight. The less abled might be
better served with a plain-text version.

--
© John Stockton, Surrey, UK. ?@merlyn.demon. co.uk Turnpike v4.00 IE 4 ©
<URL:http://www.jibbering.c om/faq/> JL/RC: FAQ of news:comp.lang. javascript
<URL:http://www.merlyn.demo n.co.uk/js-index.htm> jscr maths, dates, sources.
<URL:http://www.merlyn.demo n.co.uk/> TP/BP/Delphi/jscr/&c, FAQ items, links.

[Nik Coughin]

Dr John Stockton wrote:

JRS: In article <cg**********@n gspool-d02.news.aol.co m>, dated Sun,
22 Aug 2004 08:23:33, seen in
news:comp.infos ystems.www.authoring.html, Karl Groves
<ka**@NOSPAMkar lcore.com> posted :

In fact, I was recently charged with helping one of our clients (a
large gov't entity) decrease the file size of their pages. It seems
like these folks have never even heard of CSS. A typical page for
them contains 8 nested tables (3-4 deep. I've seen up to 6-deep on
their pages with forms) and all presentation with HTML. NO CSS with
exception of typography. Some of their pages are 100kb+ of HTML
alone.

What would the size of an approximately 800*600 GIF, PNG, or whatever
of such a page be? I tested with about enough plain text (from a Web
page) to fill a printed page, and that was under 19kB as a GIF. A
GIF of proposed garden changes is here 5-6kB; about and has as much
structure as a Web page needs.

That idea is... horrible. Sorry.

[CJM]

"Neal" <ne*****@yahoo. com> wrote in message
news:op******** ******@news.ind ividual.net...

On Fri, 20 Aug 2004 18:32:34 +0200, Andreas Prilop
<nh******@rrz n-user.uni-hannover.de> wrote:

In what respect is a space more reliable than a tab? And what
about newlines? Don't you have any newlines in your souce text?
Space, tab, newline are equally valid white space.

Crimson Editor, and I'm sure others, allows you to use the tab to indent
your code, and it saves it as spaces instead. You get the time-saving
benefit of the tab key and the more predictable spacing of regular spaces,
both together.

It's ironic that many people in this NG wax lyrical about not imposing their
view onto the client and that you merely suggest a presntation, yet these
same people try to impose a view on developers.

Always use tabs; if they are enabled they will indent the code to the level
desired by the developer. If they are not enabled, they will degrade to a
single space which provides some structuring, but not at the expense of lots
of spaces...

[PS. I think lots of editors these days allows you the option to vary the
Tab indentation and to apply Tabs as spaces...]