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When ESPN switched to CSS they saved 2 terabytes of bandwidth a day.

mikeindustries.com — ESPN.com, the online sister of the ESPN cable networks, serves up more than half a billion page views every month, so when the home page of the site dropped all layout tables in favor of structural markup and CSS-driven layout, the Web design community took notice. Savings: 730 terabytes a year.

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  • mojy2k, on 10/12/2007, -27/+13Heh cool, now if only I can get round to optimising my sites like that.
    • hater2win, on 10/12/2007, -4/+9This was a great read. Like some peope have said, it is old, but it really gives you a look into how the big boys do it there are some great tips in there. Great digg!
    • digid, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11Well if espn is so keen on bandwidth savings why did my http responses all come back uncompressed. They are not even using gzip compression to save on bandwidth!

      espn.go.com which is serving up the html is not using gzip.
      espn-att.starwave.com which is serving their css and js is not using gzip

      If you have the choice of using gzip versus CSS go with gzip. You will save a lot more on bandwidth.
      Of course if you want to save the most on bandwidth implement both.

      Go go espn web team!
    • GrinningFool, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4digid - gzip adds noticeable CPU overhead. When you support this kind of traffic, it would be enough to merit a (rough guess here) 25% increase in the number of servers you have to maintain. From that perspective, it is probably less expensive to pay for the bandwidth than to pay for the increased maintenance costs -- especially because ESPN is not really in the business of technology.
    • SanityInAnarchy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2digid has a point. Compressing their HTML alone would save them much, much more.

      GrinningFool, no, it doesn't. As far as I can tell, the majority of that page is static. Aside from the obvious caching, which I'm sure mod_deflate does, you can literally take your html file, gzip it, and put the gzip file as foo.html.gz, and configure Apache to serve that. If you need to support plaintext, put the decompressed copy as foo.html.plain. They already admit that it's generated from their CMS, so just have their CMS generate those static files, right?

      So, unless you're worried about the individual clients, this is a big win. I compressed their 123k html page down to about 23k, so yeah, I saved way more than their CSS migration. And that's not even counting what any external CSS and JS files would compress to.

      Fortunately, they have valid reasons for using CSS that have nothing to do with bandwidth.
    • paching, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Unfortunately, if even one character of the site isn't completely static, you have to gzip it every time. It's possible to pull off, but for a huge site like ESPN, I'm thinking that it'd be nigh impossible to coordinate.
  • ericab, on 10/12/2007, -1/+27Very impressive. Maybe this will encourage other sites to follow suit.
    • twollamalove, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9I find this odd, because I still find their site to feel slow in comparison to si.com. Maybe it's just the full on visual/audio rape I receive at espn.com that deceives me.

      Anyway, I wouldn't recommend anyone design their site with espn.com as the model.
  • wbrendel, on 10/12/2007, -2/+17I always wondered how significant the bandwidth savings with CSS were, and now I know. I'm very impressed! ++digg
    • knightblade2oo4, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5Yeah try to get their CSS to validate.

      Good luck, XD.
    • andr3, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4 digg for digging up the article... thanks.

      This was hugely commented upon inside the webdev community/blogs, but it's good to spread the word. The more people know the advantages of CSS, the better. If someone reads this and starts reading more stuff on webstandards, it proves the point of this digg.

      Also, relating to the above comment, my opinion is that you should try to validate your CSS, but it's not a vital necessity. If you need to break the validity of your css to achieve cross browser compatiblity, why not? Noone but the hardcore-standardistas will validate your css besides you. In the end, all that matters is that your website shows up as similar as possible in most recent/used browsers.

      check out http://www.w3schools.com/css/default.asp A good place to start.
    • uncoolcentral, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4Wow. They aren't kidding when they say it doesn't 100% validate!
      http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fespn.go.com%2F
      Over 2000 errors. That's an accomplishment!
      I'm on a big validation kick. Just got this up to spec yesterday... http://dand.net/japan2/
    • vertino, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Most of those W3C validation errors are fixable, they just need to get some junior dev to work on it for a few days.

      I'm just impressed that a major corporate website is taking accessibility more seriously now!
  • dude3609, on 10/12/2007, -26/+8ive talked to mike before.. hes a good guy :D
  • Software2, on 10/12/2007, -6/+8Okay... now I'll have to consider using CSS on my sites.

    Viva la HTML 2.0!
    • burke, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15It's super-easy. Once you start, you'll never go back.
    • lane.montgomery, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13HTML 2.0?

      More like viva la CSS 2.0
    • Surreal, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12html is at 4.01, I believe
    • geminitojanus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8"html is at 4.01, I believe"

      There is a working draft for HTML5, as well (thanks Google).

      (Note: XHTML is NOT HTML5. XHTML is a seperate entity, and is only roughly compatible with HTML, and this will change as the two technologies diverge. There is also an XHTML2 in draft form).
    • blaksaga, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3and isn't it almost obsolete? I use xhtml 1.1 and most people that I know use 1.0 transitional.
    • Nanobe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6The so-called "HTML 5" is not an official version from the World Wide Web Consortium. It's developed by the independent Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG), and has a lot of things seriously wrong about it if you ask me. I wouldn't mind some of these features being implemented under a separate XML namespace, but the way they're attempting to just glop it on top of the current HTML 4.01 and XHTML just feels like the bad old days when browser developers didn't think before adding support for junk they thought was a good idea at the time.

      Anyway, they have been trying to get the W3C to recognize it, and the W3C has begun writing drafts for a couple things like XMLHttpRequest, but the hesitance is quite clear and I believe well-founded.

      Regarding XHTML, you really shouldn't use it at this time. Internet Explorer doesn't support it properly (it only displays it as a webpage when you use the wrong content type, and IE treats it just like regular HTML), and there are vast differences between how browsers display it under these conditions and how a true XHTML browser would display it. Check this out: http://www.webdevout.net/articles/beware_of_xhtml.php
  • Seumas, on 10/12/2007, -105/+10Um... Right. How could a lame sports site even DO 2 terabytes a day to begin with?! I mean.. it's just sports. I've only been to ESPN.com once and that was to read a Hunter Thompson piece. Do that many people really care about some random sports team's hilights or some armchair coach reporter's take on a game?
    • UGM2099, on 10/12/2007, -1/+32Welcome to earth, yes people care about sports.

      ESPN.com, according the the designer, is one of the most viewed sites in the world. ~40 Million page views per day.
    • DetroitTigers, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Uhm - yes?

      Sports are a huge part of almost every culture.
    • thenikola, on 10/12/2007, -1/+22I really dont see the difference between someone "wasting their time" on digg going to sites about optomizing firefox so they can digg more useless stuff any bigger a waste of time than going to a sports site. Don't get me wrong I'm just as big of a geek as the next guy but they're no worse than us.
    • geminitojanus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15Hmm. 40 million hits per day * 300kB (rounded to 1000) (unoptimized, tables everywhere layout) = 10.9139364 terabytes per day.

      40 million hits * 200kB (rounded to 1000) (with CSS) = 7.27595761 terabytes per day.

      Pretty open and shut case.
    • Wamzlee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Yes, many care about sports, amazingly, sports is treated much much more seriously than politics, which is pretty sad, but I guess thats just my opinion.
    • PauliShore, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Hunter Thompson just saw your spelling of "highlights" and swallowed his cig when he rolled in his grave.
    • mrWoot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Side note: First radio event: Sports. First televised event: Baseball Game.

      Like people have said, sports are a huge part of every culture. It brings people together.
    • Arramol, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Fact: Different people have different interests. What you do and don't care about is not necessarily indicative of the rest of the culture.
    • dkm201, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Yeah, why are people watching sports when they could be doing something IMPORTANT, like digging up non-stories about Apple, or writing little comments about how people who like sports are dumb? You are a tool and it makes baby Jesus cry whenever you make one of your pompous posts. Hunter S. Thompson would hate you
    • dasil003, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3Nice troll dude. 9 hairy-eyeballed responses.
    • cyrix, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Do you come with fuzzy pink hair that stands straight up and can be styled in many different ways without the use of haircare products seumas?
    • ChrisGranger, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Nice troll.

      Have you noticed that practically every decent sized city in the developed world has at least one huge sports venue? Are you aware that some of them seat up to 100,000 people at a time? People like sports. LOTS of people like sports.

      I've resisted blocking you for a while, Seamus, but you just keeping trying to make me hit the little "no" symbol. If at first you don't succeed...
  • degei, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Very nice case for structured design

    digg++
  • sfacets, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Very nicely done! Welcome to modern times Disney! (the owners of espn btw)
  • MrDiaz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5no wonder where they get those terabytes of bandwith usage per month. They are the 24th site with more traffic on the internet. Good thing they are now using css, and pretty good design too. Painless and clean interface.
  • oliyoung, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Um, this is like 3 years old .. but, nonetheless, it's considered one of the most influential documents in the whole CSS movement
  • GloriousNight, on 10/12/2007, -7/+3ESPN has that much traffic a day?
    • bmobile, on 10/12/2007, -6/+3^ yeah i had no idea either. this really opened my eyes to what kinda cost savings a company can experience just by optimizing their webpage. nice!
  • MonkeyBoy87, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3this raises an interesting question. what kind of cost savings does this ceate 730 TB is not a small amount of bandwidth to pay for, even if you are ESPN. I also wonder what other sites at the front end of the long tail would benefit by doing this.
  • raccettura, on 10/12/2007, -5/+2I believe this is old netscape devedge content.
  • dbpigeon, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8Now I wonder how much Slashdot saved when they switched to CSS.
    • elroy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8the bandwidth saved from user complaint posts alone must be larger than the GDP of a small country
  • hrunting, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12ESPN made that switch in 2003. The article referenced is from June 10, 2003. Hell, the interviewer is Eric Meyer, from Netscape Communications! I'm not saying the ideas behind the article aren't great, but this isn't groundbreaking stuff anymore.
    • EricDraven, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Yeah. I kinda stopped reading and looked at the date when it mentioned the Gary Payton/Ray Allen trade.
  • peterthegreat4, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5i'm a designer and i read a lot about trends and accessibility. I hear a lot about not making a design wider than 600-700 pixels. however, almost all of the most popular sites (msn, yahoo, espn, cnn) have designs that push or are wider than 800 pixles. i think that i'm going to focus less on this issue of compatibility.
    • uptown, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9> 87% of typical web users have screens resolutions above 800px wide ... and those that don't won't be spending any money on your site anyway...
    • wrinkles, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Yahoo! and Google are 800px. Amazon is about 850px. Staying within 800px still seems like a reasonable idea. I have a larger display, but I don't like being forced to use all of it.
    • debian_, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5"and those that don't won't be spending any money on your site anyway"

      What a horrible business shooting yourself in the foot is.

      If you have the freedom to decide width dimensions for the site you are hired to design, is it really that hard to stay within 800 pixels? When you consider factors such as the number of letters/words per line of text block for optimum reading, not overwhelming viewers with excessive, condensed content, it makes going over 800 but staying below 1024 a hassle. Some designs will benefit by ignoring the 13%, but for the most part, you should be designing your site for the content, not the other way around.

      If people are gonna have wide sites, try and make them fluid or something. Remember 800x600 and 1024x768 is a screen resolution, and not everyone browses with their browser maximized.
    • uptown, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1""and those that don't won't be spending any money on your site anyway"

      What a horrible business shooting yourself in the foot is."

      Shhh! I'm eliminating my competition! :)
    • davdav, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Sites larger than 800px alienate Apple 12" laptop users. These things have such low resolution, and most people do not use browser windows maximized on OS X.
    • boredzo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1My suggestion: Make the code work well with a *minimum* of 600-700 px, and resize upward gracefully. You don't want to waste valuable space in a huge browser window any more than you want to force people to scroll left and right.
  • lightdifference, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4It mentions firefox nowhere and classifies safari as a beta, heh. This is old news. 2003 anyone?
  • uptown, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Anyone got a good reference book or site for CSS? I'd perfer a book (like to hold things every once in awhile) but a site'll do as well.
  • V3X3D, on 10/12/2007, -9/+1good news, 730 terabytes of porn for us
  • josher, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4This is awesome stuff but did anyone notice the date? June 10, 2003?
  • skell, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2It may be old, but it's a terrific read. Go CSS!
  • poohneat, on 10/12/2007, -9/+2Web to IE please play nice and be CSS compliant :)

    --

  • jczer68, on 10/12/2007, -14/+3Blech, stupid jocks should remain in the stone ages where they belong. Shame on those who taught them teh sacred CSS.
  • EmileVictor, on 10/12/2007, -13/+1So... CSS is supposed to replace tables? How does it do that?
    Send me an e-mail about it please:
    http://www.mediahug.com/ contact page.
    • geminitojanus, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5CSS is a way of alleviating the stress put on a server by describing how the description language (aka markup) should be processed (a "Meta-Meta Language", if you please).

      Since CSS doesn't have to be embedded, it is capable of being external to the markup data itself, and can be modified by the document object model directly.

      No, Stylesheets are not supposed to replace Markup. Stylesheets are supposed to make Markup easier to work with, by giving users the freedom of arbitrarily changing the Style, without having to change the markup.

      And yes, CSS often can be used in place of tables with "Div Magic", as CSS has full ability to do positioning and alignment of objects. Just don't expect it to work in the most common browser on the Internet (Internet Explorer).
    • davdav, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Tables are great for tabular data. Other than that, avoid.
  • statmobile, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'm really glad they decided to follow a standard such as this, but if only they would realize that not everyone uses Windows! Between them and mlb.com I find it obnoxious to surf their sites as a Mac or GNU/Linux machine.
    • m85476585, on 10/12/2007, -5/+2Geeks don't like sports.
    • Ionik, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5untrue - there are lots out there who are both geeks and jocks
  • blaksaga, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I know that since I have switched to css from old table designs I probably write about a third to a half as much code. When you don't need tr's and td's everywhere and can just do a single div with style attributes it really cuts down on amount of code.
    • m85476585, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Since I switched to CSS I *write* probably 10x more code. With tables I let Dreamweaver do the work, but with CSS I do it manually. I dont know if I have any less total code.
    • GeneralSun, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Dreamweaver can also handle css divs. The versions after MX I think.
    • chrisfarber, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@m85476585:

      If you're a serious web developer, you should know. It's poor practice to not even know your own HTML/CSS.

      Also, maybe I'm crazy, but I would imagine Dreamweaver would have a GUI for creating CSS? I believe the best way to code a website is still direct coding, even if you facilitate yourself with tools such as Dreamweaver. You can't expect them to manage everything for you, however, or you'll end up with a mess.
    • m85476585, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I have Dreamweaver MX, so it doesn't have CSS support (It recognizes it, but it can't write/suggest it like the newer versions. The suggest feature for CSS is extremely helpful).

      I write most of my code now, but I take a lot of it from other sources. But I don't really use the WYSIWYG part of Dreamweaver anymore, except to make sure everything is at least close to working. I still use it as a file manager, but I could probably just use a FTP program and a text editor.
  • mikeazorin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I'm sure they could cut another terabyte by switching to textonly ads.
    • geminitojanus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Most ad agencies host their own ads and images, so posting a link offsite to an ad company isn't going to hurt your bandwidth all that much.

      But, it would be a nice gesture to switch to text only ads, they're definitely easier on the eyes, and I'm a lot more likely to click a text-only ad than a bouncing basketball with flashing red and white lights.
  • ateam, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I must have saved at least megabytes in my outgoing bandwidth after implementing CSS on my site ;-)

    Heh, but no joke, CSS rocks.
  • mendicitis, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1You mean ditch the flash ads that engulf my entire computer screen(s)? That's WHY I go to espn.com
  • MalDON, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3Their site contains errors though...

    Along with not closing tags correctly. They did declare their page as xhtml transitional, so why did they not follow the standards?
    • mrWoot, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Way to spam the comments and show that portals have problems.. woot you!
    • Mardala, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Did you read the article? He clearly explains it doesn't validate 100% and why. I will have to agree with him on this as well that its a nice mark to shoot for, having a few errors doesn't mean its not a well structured page. I still use target="_blank" for links to external pages knowing it doesn't validate strict xhtml even though that is what I code for. I think its great to see large corporations working WITH the developers. Maybe its old but I missed this article and its a good interview with a lot of feedback from the interviewee.
    • davdav, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Wait a minute.. target="_blank" does NOT validate strict? What are you supposed to use then?
    • error401, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2^^ You're not. Your page shouldn't open new windows, that should be a decision made by the user (via 'Open in New Window' or similar), not you. The target="_blank" is really just a hack in the first place, and a particularly annoying one. Let the user decide when they want a new window.
  • tjl2015, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1They saved two terabytes of outgoing bandwith per day by switching from CSS. What the article didn't mention was that they saved fire terabytes of incoming bandwidth per day simply by installing a porn filter on their corporate network. :)
  • kendawg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1thx for the error list.

    edit: n/m, you got rid of it.....good idea :)
    • MalDON, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I was going to paste one error, but I guess I got them all. Like everyone else, I hate long pointless posts, like this one :p.
  • CaughtThinking, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1they also lost some customers! ;) i remember the "forced upgrade" page. I guess they analyzed their users carefully to make sure they weren't losing anyone that important.
  • bpapa, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Old but that's a great find. Since there are still many against standards, an example as huge as this is probably enough to get any doubter to think twice.
  • trilioth, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I remember reading a suggestion from a "web standards guy" two years ago mentioning how the ESPN website could benefit this way... Seems they are behind or either it took them a long time to code the switch...
    • trilioth, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Doh! erm... consider my mistake as an example for why one should read the article or at least some of the comments before posting a comment... silly me... maybe it was 2002 when I read it... I am not good at keeping up with the numbers of the passing of time... our view on time seems to be a bit oppressive toward creativity...
  • fluffyturtle, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0And I almost cared, almost.

    Quick, every single webmaster out there keep us up to date with everything you do to your site to save bandwidth!
  • mahmoodsdotjpg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0even in 2003 their website was still a total and complete hog. if that's "improved," they are light years ahead of where they were now. a few months ago they switched to a new design that i like a lot more.
  • Skeuomorph, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Math someone posted above.... "Hmm. 40 million hits per day * 300kB (rounded to 1000) (unoptimized, tables everywhere layout) = 10.9139364 terabytes per day. 40 million hits * 200kB (rounded to 1000) (with CSS) = 7.27595761 terabytes per day. Pretty open and shut case."

    Math posted in TFA: 50KB saved per day, 40 million views per day = 2 TB savings.

    Okay, but that was three years ago or so. Always interesting to see how a project like this ends up. So, how're they doing today?

    I just stuck my nose in the source code of the espn.com home page for a second, and sure, it's got some CSS. But there's a lot of waste that if "traffic savings" is this real for them, it makes you wonder why they're not looking at this. Picking just one: the Tickets list, which is 15KB of HTML all by itself, mostly because the links look like this:

    <a style='color:#009933;' href=... then some links and markup and more links and more markup....

    http://x.go.com/cgi/x.pl?name=SEARCH_fp_mlb06baltimore&srvc=sz&goto=http://sports.espn.go.com/keyword/search?searchString=baltimore+orioles+tickets&partner=front
    http://x.go.com/cgi/x.pl?name=SEARCH_fp_mlb06baltimore&srvc=sz&goto=http://sports.espn.go.com/keyword/search?searchString=baltimore+orioles+jerseys&partner=front

    No way to optimize that? Why not have the links pick up style from their div ID? And then they've got one of the shortest domain names in the world, they're using a redirector in the link... why not have the CMS do a "tiny URL" on their own links? Any time a link is more than, lets say an eight digit alphanumeric for example, replace it, so the page uses: http://x.go.com/cgi/x.pl?a4z3b2x1, or heck, since it's used by everything, just: http://x.go.com/a4z3b2x1 ... and while you're thinking about http://x.go.com/ check out the ratio of CSS to Printed Text on that page--some kind of a record. By switching from CSS to old school markup, they'd save over 90% of the page length... ;-) View the source in a code coloring editor, seems like the majority of markup is insanely long hyperlinks.

    Overall, this home page, it seems, is a lost cause. Not counting all the remote javascript calls, total page weight not counting the Adblocked JavaScripts of 347KB. Of that, 128K is HTML (includes table tags), while 135K is Flash, and 84K is images. Interestingly, the nav type items are super optimized, with several gifs of just 54 bytes, but then they've got a couple 20-30k "hero" images.

    (By the way, this does not include the 25K CSS file, and the 46K Javascript file (still not counting the Adblocked Javascripts), since I thought the CSS and site helper scripts would be cached. But then I checked again, and they have frontpage specific names, bringing the total page weight to 407KB.)

    At 347K it will take over 3 minutes to display for the average 14.4 modem user, 90 seconds for a "high speed" modem user, 15 seconds over 176kbit DSL, and 10 seconds on 300kbit broadband, and 15% longer with the CSS/JS calls.

    How does this compare to Digg? Digg's HTML is
    • Skeuomorph, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2(got cut off)

      How does this compare to Digg? Digg's HTML is <30K, 62K of CSS, 9.5K of images, and 117K of JavaScripts. The images and news change, but the CSS and JS cache. Initial page weight is ~200K, but after that under 40KB. This is what CSS is supposed to be for.

      (Was cut off by the HTML filter on less than sign.)
  • NeilM, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3This was true "before" the digg effect. ;-)
  • leonwestbrook, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1That is interesting, but I hate ESPN for the mere fact that they decide to play annoying ass ads that I can't even block in firefox for some reason that play out of nowhere.

    Plus they take a colossal ***** on Hockey. (Tony Kornhieser I'm looking at you!)

    tsn.ca is better and I don't even live in Canada.
  • dimatt, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Im sure i used to make up a quarter of that bandwidth usage ;)
    • MikeCampo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1For what? Soccer?
    • dimatt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1For every sport that you have never participated in mike. ;)
  • AshKetchum, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0That's a lot of bytes!
  • mightymouse, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Wow thats a crap load of bandwidth
  • veritech, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Anyone notice that they had to use, fixed height columns, the dynamically resizing ones are kinda hard to get right. Nice design though, should be a sign to others
  • Necros, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0CSS is my hero. Wish I could take a class for it; all I have is a Java class (more applications of java, but I care the most about web design).

    Dugg.
  • digid, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Well if espn is so keen on bandwidth savings why did my http responses all come back uncompressed. They are not even using gzip compression to save on bandwidth!

    espn.go.com which is serving up the html is not using gzip.
    espn-att.starwave.com which is serving their css and js is not using gzip

    If you have the choice of using gzip versus CSS go with gzip. You will save a lot more on bandwidth.
    Of course if you want to save the most on bandwidth implement both.

    Go go espn web team!
  • nurriz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Great interview. Good digg.
  • AdamCo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"There is a third group worth mentioning and that is the group of people on machines which are "locked down" by IT staff and thus not upgradeable. This group poses the toughest question for us because we know they want to upgrade, but they really can’t. Though we obviously don’t feel any ill will towards these people, we feel that as an hugely influential site, we are doing these people a favor in the long run by insisting on standards. Once other media sites follow and then smaller sites after that, it will really be a requirement that IT departments supply their workers with standards-compliant browsers."

    So people can view espn.com at work?
  • markforrester, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0This article was written in June 2003? A bit outdated. Still a good read though.
  • speedmaster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Wow!
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