Date: Sun, 9 Nov 2003 23:30:49 +0900
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Subject: CSS and XHTML
From: Michael Glaesemann <grzm@myrealbox.com>
To: pgsql-www@postgresql.org
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Message-Id: <504D1003-12C1-11D8-A551-0005029FC1A7@myrealbox.com>

Hello all!

I saw a post on pgsql-hackers from Robert Treat that made me interested=20
in finding out if there's something for me to do with the=20
postgresql.org site. It sounds like there are a lot of things going on:=20
merging of sites, adding or increasing the multilingual capabilities,=20
and reworking the backend.

I don't know specifics of what needs to be done and I'm willing to work=20
on anything I'm capable of doing. One thing I am interested in doing is=20
working to make the site as efficient and standards-compliant as=20
possible. In particular, I'd like to see the feasibility of coding to=20
the XHTML standard and moving as much presentational code to CSS as=20
possible.

For the most part, this is pretty straightforward and not too=20
difficult. I downloaded the site from the CVS and reworked=20
cache/index.htm, postgresql.css, and page.php. I rewrote them to XHTML=20
1.0 Strict and got them free of errors (using BBEdit's Check Syntax=20
function) with presentation that closely matches the original. (One=20
caveat: I haven't been able to connect to the database(s)=97is there a=20
way to do this from my development machine?=97so the generated pages=20
haven't included the main content. The markup generated by the=20
basic.*.php scripts is all error-free.) I don't foresee any major=20
problems in the rest of the site, though I have to get to know the code=20
better to be sure.

I see at least two advantages for the site: (a) the resulting scripts=20
are easier to read, as there is very little presentational markup=20
remaining, and therefore much easier to maintain; and (b) the server=20
load is substantially decreased, as less code needs to be sent to the=20
client. The presention (in the css file) is cached by the clients, so=20
it rarely needs to be fetched. The pages themselves are slimmed down,=20
since they contain just the document structure. For example, the=20
current main index page is 15.2K + .6K (postgresql.css) for a total of=20
15.8K. The main index page is now 6.3K (sans news remember), and=20
postgresql.css is 3.8K, for a total of 10.1K. I know we're only talking=20
5K, but it's a 30% reduction in server load for the *first* page view.=20
Once the CSS is cached, we're looking at a 40% reduction per page.

Of course these will change once the content. Just a rough estimate for=20
the content section: 13.6K to 11.3K, so just a little savings there=20
(about 15%).

Anyway, you guys probably know all this anyway. And I'm sure there are=20
more critical issues to work on. But this is one thing I know I could=20
work on and you can probably tell I'm kind of excited to. If you have=20
any questions or would like to see the modifications, just ask. One=20
thing I'd like to know is server stats (load and browser distributions,=20
if it's available). And if I can help out in other ways, I'm happy to=20
do that as well.

Regards,

Michael Glaesemann
grzm myrealbox com