SkinnyWeb

Posted on Tuesday, February 19, 2008

SkinnyWeb is a Graffiti plug-in designed to reduce the output size of your site to the user. This does not mean any of the content changes, the behind-the-scenes source is just compressed for a faster download time.

Installing SkinnyWeb

You can get SkinnyWeb by visiting the Graffiti Marketplace. In your Graffiti control panel, go to Site Options | Plug-Ins | Search Online Plug-ins.

Configuring SkinnyWeb

SkinnyWeb defaults to using all available compression methods, but you can change this if you want. Log in to the Graffiti control panel and browse over to Site Options | Plug Ins.

If you want to change the default compression methods or even turn them off, click Edit.

What is the difference in output?

Cosmetically, nothing. The user will not notice any difference viewing your site. Here are some performance numbers reported by YSlow. This was taken from the homepage of the Training theme in the Graffiti MarketPlace.

See that drop in size - just by compressing the source. You are probably wondering why the JavaScript files and Stylesheet files above are not compressed as well. This is due to .js and .css files not being processed through asp.net. The plugin should work fine if you route js/css files to go through IIS, but I am researching an easier way to set this up.

I would appreciate any feedback - jdavis@telligent.com. Enjoy!