How to check HTTP Compression with HttpWatch

July 10, 2009

HTTP compression is one of the easiest and most effective ways to improve the performance of a web site. A browser indicates that it supports compression with the Accept-Encoding request header and the server indicates the compression type in the Content-Encoding response header. This screenshot from the Stream tab of HttpWatch shows these headers and the compressed content being returned from the server: Here’s another screenshot of a page that is not compressed: The browser still indicated that it accepted gzip and deflate compression, but the server ignored this and returned uncompressed HTML with no Content-Encoding header. The easiest way to check the amount … Continue reading →