It is not a trick question. Without a doubt, our expectation would be that the smaller sized file would download faster, regardless of the speed of our network connection to the server. But how can we reduce the size of payload if we cannot trim the actual contents? A quick and easy way to reduce the size would be to compress the content to be sent in the response.
If we apply this principle to Sugar, the compression of payloads sent from the web server to the browser would result in a snappier user experience, due to faster retrieval of data and other necessary components. As a general rule of thumb, we should always implement a compression methodology in order to help us achieve the best experience possible.
But how can one determine if compression is enabled and being utilized by the web server hosting a Sugar instance?
The image in Figure 1.1 helps us answer that question.
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| Figure 1.1: Example ListView response |
To answer our question we must examine the web requests exchanged between our web browser and the web server. This can be easily accomplished within Chrome by accessing the Developer Tools and reviewing the contents of the Network tab, as illustrated in Figure 1.1.
