iPhone in Australia
While iPhone hasn't been released in Australia yet, there is no reason to wait in making a few tweaks to ensure your site is ready. We've been using the iPhone for a few months and we can quite honestly say there is no comparison to any other mobile device out there - we love it.
Like most mobile devices, internet speed over the mobile network is about 1/10th of normal ADSL WIFI. While browsing within a wifi hotspot is zippy (pretty much the same speed as you'd get on a desktop/laptop and the pages look great), it's the mobile network performance that hurts when you are on the road.
What can I do to improve my website speed?
Imagine if you could compress your website before it was sent to a visitor, so the data being sent over the network was much smaller, then when the visitor receives the data, they unpack it and view.
Sounds too complicated or too good to be true?
It's not - believe us. Your visitors won't need to change or do a thing. As long as they are using a web browser that is less than 7 years old - it will take care of everything. A small change on most PHP capable webservers will let you deliver compressed web pages without having to compromise on your sites look and feel. iPhone uses the latest version of the Safari browser and handles compressed pages effortlessly - so now you can send less data down the pipe and improve the performance not just on iPhone, but on all your visitors connections.
There is a PHP module called zlib that takes care of everything for you.
The process is simple - someone visits your website, and their browser tells the server it's capable of handling zipped/compressed content. The webserver says great, and servers up compressed content which the browser can then unpack.
I understand it's a pretty technical post, but probably worth asking your web host about.
If you'd like to check if your site is being compressed already and/or the potential savings to bandwith and speed improvements you can test your site at this link.
If your web host can't help you - give us a call.
David
Posted on Monday, January 21, 2008
