When Written: Feb 2010
Once you have your code working fine, here is a little tip to help improve the speed of your web site. Just switch on HTTP Compression. With this turned on at the web server then any browser that is capable of receiving compressed HTTP, which now is most of them, will get a compressed data stream when it requests a web page. This will speed up the display of your pages enormously, particularly if working over a poor internet connection.
To switch HTTP compression on in IIS6 just open the IIS manager and right click on ‘web sites’ and select properties. Just note that by default this setting is site–wide and so will apply to all the web sites hosted on the server. When the properties dialog box comes up select the ‘services’ tab and select ‘compress application files’ under the HTTP compression option. You can set this not to be site-wide if you wish by entering the command line:
adsutil set w3svc/filters/compression/parameters/HcDoStaticCompression false
If you don’t have full remote access to your server as might be the case if it is hosted remotely then as long as you are a member of the Administrators group on that server you can set this option via a command line. Just open a command window and type:
cscript adsutil.vbs set w3svc/filters/compression/parameters/HcDoDynamicCompression true
The difference that HTTP compression will make to your web site will of course depend on the size of the HTML on them as well as the graphics, but as ASP .NET controls can produce a lot of HTML then you should see a significant speed improvement by setting this option.
Article by: Mark Newton
Published in: Mark Newton