[e2e] Compression of web pages

[Eric A. Hall]

on 8/27/2002 1:30 PM Woojune Kim wrote:
>> Are you referring to
>> http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1029974251705867835,00.html ?
>
> Not sure of the exact url (don't have web access to WSJ), but it was
> printed on Monday or last Friday I think.

http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20020822.html is a free-access version

>> From Mr. Mossberg's comments that the figures were grainy, I had the
>> impression that some sort of proxy was taking the .gif, .jpg files
>> apart and reducing their clarity / size , so as to make their sizes
>> smaller. Wouldn't that work ?

That was my reading of the principle benefit as well. In order to pull
this off in a generalized nature, you'd want something like a
"Content-Resolution: 30dpi" header in the HTTP request that let you
request smaller image files. I think it would probably be generally useful
for handhelds and such which already suffer from resolution problems
anyway, and where the smaller image sizes would provide better load times
for the same level of grain.

However, I don't think it would be all that useful for the mainstream
browser users. As a result, there wouldn't be very many web sites which
offered it, and only those few sites which wanted to specifically address
handheld users would have any motivation for it. In this regard, the users
of the handhelds would likely prefer to continue using the gateway, since
they would always get the benefit.

-- 
Eric A. Hall                                        http://www.ehsco.com/
Internet Core Protocols          http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/coreprot/