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Safari + Gzip

Says David Hyatt:

Erik Barzeski has done a redesign of his blog. I'm pointing it out because I think the fadeout effect at the top of the page is so cool. I'm assuming it's a fixed positioned block with a transparent PNG background?

He is correct. I left a comment there - the first one - and mentioned some issues with bottom: 0px and so on. The /dave blog is his personal blog (as opposed to /hyatt), so I don't expect much to come of that. Rather, I've filed real bugs on the issues that I've isolated.

I mention off-hand that I'd like Safari to support gzip. In my tests on this site, which is gzipped, the results are quite stunning:

Browser        Time          Gzip?
-------        ------        -----
Camino          3 sec        Yes
Mozilla         4 sec        Yes
OW5sp23        10 sec        No
Safari         11 sec        No

Of course, those results are not necessarily a test of gzip, since Mozilla/Camino use the Gecko engine and OmniWeb/Safari use WebCore. To test rendering speed, I saved a static (.html) copy of my blog's home page to my desktop (with images and all supporting files also saved locally) and loaded each of them:

Browser        Time  
-------        ------
Camino          2 sec
Mozilla         3 sec
OW5sp23        10 sec
Safari          8 sec

Those results are interesting to say the least. Have you got sites that differ tremendously in their render speed? What are their numbers?

10 Responses to "Safari + Gzip"

  1. If I understand things right, this also saves me (the publisher) bandwidth right? Safari really needs to support this.

  2. Might want to check that design in a couple of other browsers... lol... it's hosed. Looks kinda stooopid, too.

  3. I didn't want to say anything because I thought maybe my browser was screwey, but the top fade thing looks awful in Pheonix for Windows. It mihgt look good in Safari, haven't been able to check yet.

    I think (not sure) that OW SP's do not request individual items all at once, as most browsers do. Therefore it asks the server for image.jpg, and when that completes, asks for the next image. I think that's the gist of the problem.

    Safari seems to be quiet a bit faster than 10 seconds when I load your site.

  4. Hey Oooby, the design is fine and displays perfectly in each of the four browsers mentioned. Even works in IE 5.2.x for Mac OS X except for an ignored "no-repeat" in the title.

    But hey, what kind of commentary can I really expect from someone who leaves a generic URL and no email address?

  5. Hmm. Are you using <?php ob_start("ob_gzhandler"); ?> for your gzip encoding?

  6. Ok, I have to say that I've been really impressed with some of the tricks on this site. I've been able to figure out the top fade based on the "whiteshade" clue.

    BUT, how in the heck are you doing the little URL pop-up thing?

    I've seen that several places and I just can't grok it.

    Speaking of popup URLS, the one for "CSS Validator FAQ" says "CSS Validator AQ". 🙂

    Excellent site, I'm always happy to see it pop to the top of my blogroll.

  7. Nice Titles get me the cool popup boxes, but they may go away soon.

    Thanks for the pointer on "FAQ" - I've corrected the spelling. I appreciate it.

  8. Just wanted to say congrats on the redesign--I hadn't noticed the effect at the top right away, but it's pretty damn clever :-)!

  9. NSLog(); Redesign

    NSLog(); was redesigned yesterday. For some reason I don't like the fade-out effect at the top of the page (if you can't see it 'cause you're using IE or something, get a real browser: Mozilla, Opera, Safari). I think it's simply too thick. The rest of...