Comments on: Does white space slow the browser down in web coding like PHP, Javascript and stuff?

By: jitendra

jitendra — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 13:51:59 +0000

I agree with bravo
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By: Robin T

Robin T — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 13:21:59 +0000

In almost all cases white spaces are not a performance issue.

For server-side code like PHP, the code is interpreted or compiled on server side locally where the compiler / interpreter is clever enough to ignore the white spaces, so you don’t need to worry about it.

For client-side code like JavaScript, CSS and HTML, extra white space does mean extra bandwidth is required to transfer the files from the web server to the browser (and network bottleneck is indeed the slowest compared to others – listed from fastest to slowest: CPU, RAM, disk, network). However, note that most servers and browsers support and perform compression (e.g.: using mod_gzip or mod_deflate in Apache) during the transfer, so the extra bandwidth for the compressed white spaces will be tiny.

So generally you don’t need to worry about the white space and just focus on making your code readable.

For huge code though there are tools that can automatically trim down the size of your files like HTML Tidy, CSSTidy and JSMin.
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By: cristianods

cristianods — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 12:57:59 +0000

Any extra markup that you place on your code does slow down the performance of your code, therefore, unless you are programming for mobile (cell phones), blank spaces will not affect as much.

You should consider many techniques as possible for speeding up your system, such as correct syntax on for loops, caching, mem caching, etc.

P.S. 4 blank spaces is the tab equivalent and is the best measure to be used when indenting your code since it will be read in the same way on the most of the editors.
References :
http://mcloide.wordpress.com
http://www.mcloide.com

By: dhvrm

dhvrm — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 12:10:59 +0000

Technically, yes; the more text the server and browser have to parse, including white space, the worse the performance. Practically, no. We're talking about a couple extra microseconds.
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By: Dude of the Future

Dude of the Future — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 11:51:59 +0000

yes they simply do coz it increases the size of the file even by 1 kilobyte,,so i suggest you to remove all the spaces in the code when the development is done….to do that you can simply use this http://www.selfseo.com/html_optimizer.php
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By: tj

tj — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 11:44:59 +0000

There may be some effect depending on the code, though generally it probably doesn’t make a measurable difference.

PHP gets interpreted by the server so whitespace in PHP code should not really effect the browser.

Javascript though gets interpreted by the browser so whitespace there may have some effect since it does increase the amount of data to be transferred.

Usually whitespace is a good thing for code maintanence so I wouldn’t worry much about stripping it out, adding minutes to code changes just to save what would likely only be milliseconds in rendering time.

A google search will return some results with interesting comments and debate on this subject.
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By: Colinc

Colinc — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 11:34:59 +0000

It will obviously have some impact on performance, as the browser needs to read EVERY line to determine if it is valid code or not. It probably would not be noticeable in normal use. I often use single line spacing between 2 sections, like an if() and the next routine. If there is a block of if()s or nested if()s I use a single line space, then a short comment to mark the beginning, followed by a matching end comment and another empty line. Say : //select operation 1 – at the beginning, and //end op 1 -afterwards. And I run from a relatively slow site feed, and my site opens fast even on a 33Kbps dialup.
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By: Gorlock

Gorlock — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 11:15:59 +0000

PHP and javascript code needs to be transported to the client for them to be useful. The larger the code, the more the network delay, generally speaking. However, data for network transfer gets broken down into packets of standard size (I think its 1KB, but I could be mistaken). It takes the same amount of time to transfer 1 byte v/s the max packet size. So *some* white space bloat would not contribute to network delay.

Code readability is an important consideration during software development and maintenance and should not be taken lightly. I would encourage you to continue doing what you are doing. You can consider "code compactors" that will trim white space after you are done with the development and before you deploy it online. This offers the best of both worlds – code readability and fast download.

Hope that helps!
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