What is Compression?
Also called: Gzip, Brotli
The short answer
Compression shrinks text files like HTML, CSS and JavaScript as the server sends them, using Gzip or Brotli, and the browser expands them on arrival.
Compression, explained
Most hosts enable it by default; it commonly cuts text transfer size by a large fraction.
Questions people ask about Compression
What is Compression?
Compression shrinks text files like HTML, CSS and JavaScript as the server sends them, using Gzip or Brotli, and the browser expands them on arrival.
Related terms
Minification removes whitespace, comments and long names from code so HTML, CSS and JavaScript files are smaller and download faster.
CDNA CDN is a network of servers around the world that keeps copies of a site's files and serves each visitor from the location nearest to them.
Page speedPage speed is how quickly a web page loads and becomes usable, measured by metrics like Largest Contentful Paint, Interaction to Next Paint and layout stability.
Core Web VitalsCore Web Vitals are Google's three user-experience metrics: Largest Contentful Paint for loading, Interaction to Next Paint for responsiveness and Cumulative Layout Shift for visual stability.
Part of the Web Encyclopedia by Apex Flow Digital. Definitions are general knowledge, kept current, with no invented statistics.