Brotli: A New Open Source Compression Algorithm for the Web
-
https://opensource.com/article/17/1/brotli-compression-algorithm
Brotli is a new open source compression algorithm designed to enable an Internet that's faster for users.
Modern web pages can often be made up of dozens of megabytes of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and that's before accounting for images, videos, or other large file content, which all makes for hefty downloads. Such loads are why pages are transferred in compressed formats; they significantly reduce the time required between a website visitor requesting a web page and that page appearing fully loaded on the screen and ready for use.
While the Brotli algorithm was announced by Google in September 2015, only recently have the majority of web browsers have adopted it. The HTTP servers Apache and nginx now offer Brotli compression as an option. Besides Google, other commercial vendors (such as Cloudflare and DreamHost) have begun to deploy support for Brotli as well.
Compared to the good ol' gzip file compression and decompression algorithm, Brotli's open source algorithm shrinks data by an additional 20 to 25%. Brotli accomplishes this superior feat by making use of a dictionary that includes the most common words and syllables in English, Spanish, Chinese, Hindi, Russian, and Arabic, as well as common phrases used in machine readable languages (particularly HTML and JavaScript). This gives Brotli a clear advantage in compression and decompression over other algorithms, like gzip, bzip2, LZMA, etc.
-
This looks interesting. I see more potential benefits from this in areas with low bandwidth and mobile devices.
