Panama Jack wrote:
Content (encoded: 15.87 KiB / decoded: 72.39 KiB)
The encoded size is a compressed version of the HTML and that is the bandwidth used. The decoded size is the uncompressed size of the HTML that would normally be sent if compression was turned off.
Err......yeah, I get how compression works.
Panama Jack wrote:
If we used <script type="text/javascript" src="js/aatfuncs.js" ></script> the js file wouldn't be compressed as it would be loaded outside of the template engine.
That rather depends. You could have apache automatically compress the js before it gets sent. Even if you don't, though, you'd only be sending the js at most once/session, as the browser would cache it on the client side. As a result, your total bandwidth would go down even lower, and probably significantly.
Panama Jack wrote:
The other reason we are doing this on the main site is because Firefox is horribly BUGGY when it comes to using loaded CSS files. Half the time it doesn't process them properly so you have a broken page. I tested this over and over again using the latest Firefox version. Opera, Safari and IE would display the site properly every time. Firefox would display a mangled page 1/4 of the time. Firefox seems to have a problem with large CSS files and CSS formatted pages.
Really?!?! I've not encountered this before, and I've done a LOT of work with Firefox. I.E. is a pig, and Opera has an annoying quirk with how it handles the <hr> element. Other than that, I've found that if I write W3C compliant code for FF (and that includes CSS), it tends to work in Safari and Opera, and then I have to tweak the hell out of it to make it work in IE (although IE 7 is SOMEWHAT better in this regard). However, I tend to rely primarily on CSS for my effects, rather than javascript (which you seem to). That might be the key difference. Certainly, the javascript approach allows you to do some things that are hard (if not downright impossible) to do using a CSS-only approach, ESPECIALLY across multiple browsers.
I suppose the old "Your mileage may vary" adage applies here. LOL.