Core PHP Programming, Third Edition

28.8. Output Compression

Even considering the growing availability of personal broadband Internet access, many sites still address the market of dialup users. If you happen to be running one of them, you probably know that the size of your pages has direct influence on the amount of time your users have to wait before they can see your Web site. Regardless of your Web server's performance, delivery to the client remains at the mercy of the network. Reducing the size of your content reduces the impact of network performance on the overall request-to-response time.

Typically, giving up on certain elements in your Web site just to improve performance is not an option. That is, graphics designers go through their own process of optimizing the design ...