Note: This blog post was originally written before the new Chromium-based Microsoft Edge was announced. As a consequence, it includes discussion of the behavior of the Legacy Microsoft Edge browser. The new Chromium-based Edge behaves largely the same way as Google Chrome. Last Update: 13 June 2025 InPrivate Mode was introduced in Internet Explorer 8Continue reading “Private Browsing Mode”
Tag Archives: performance
Finding Image Bloat In Binary Files
I’ve previously talked about using PNGDistill to optimize batches of images, but in today’s quick post, I’d like to show how you can use the tool to check whether images in your software binaries are well optimized. For instance, consider Chrome. Chrome uses a lot of PNGs, all mashed together a single resources.pak file. Tip:Continue reading “Finding Image Bloat In Binary Files”
2016 Brotli Update
Windows 10 Build 14986 adds support for Brotli compression to the Edge browser (but, somewhat surprisingly, not IE11). So at the end of 2016, we now have support for this improved compression algorithm in Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera, Brave, Vivaldi, and the long tail of browsers based on Chromium. Of modern browsers, only Apple isContinue reading “2016 Brotli Update”
Out-of-Memory is (Usually) a Lie
The most common exception logged by Fiddler telemetry is OutOfMemoryException. Yesterday, a Facebook friend lamented: “How does firefox have out of memory errors so often while only taking up 1.2 of my 8 gigs of ram?” This morning, a Python script running on my machine as a part of the Chromium build process failed with aContinue reading “Out-of-Memory is (Usually) a Lie”
Automatically Evaluating Compressibility
Fiddler’s Transformer tab has long been a simple way to examine the use of HTTP compression of web assets, especially as new compression engines (like Zopfli) and compression formats (like Brotli) arose. However, the one-Session-at-a-time design of the Transformer tab means it is cumbersome to use to evaluate the compressibility of an entire page orContinue reading “Automatically Evaluating Compressibility”
Getting Started with Profile Guided Optimization
For the convenience of the Windows developer community, I periodically compile the Zopfli and Brotli compressors from source, building for Win32 and code-signing the binaries (Interested? Get Zopfli.exe and Brotli.exe). After announcing the latest build on Twitter, I got an interesting question in reply: While I try to use the latest compiler (VS2015 U1), I’veContinue reading “Getting Started with Profile Guided Optimization”
What’s New in Fiddler 4.6.0.7
TLDR? – Get the newest Fiddler here. We’re performing a staged rollout of this build; it won’t be on autoupdate until next week. Under the Hood As mentioned in our notes about the Fiddler 4.6 release, we’ve started taking a very close look at Fiddler’s performance. Fiddler’s use of the CPU, system memory, and theContinue reading “What’s New in Fiddler 4.6.0.7”
WebP–What Isn’t Google Telling Us?
Beyond their awesome work on Zopfli and Brotli, Google has brought their expertise in compression to bear on video and image formats. One of the most interesting of these efforts is WebP, an image format designed to replace the aging JPEG (lossy) and PNG (lossless) image formats. WebP offers more efficient compression mechanisms than bothContinue reading “WebP–What Isn’t Google Telling Us?”
Ad Publishers–A TODO List
Where’s Google’s* blog on how they’re doing everything they can to make ads they serve as fast and small as possible? Where’s Google’s blog on how many ads they’ve nuked as “deceptive” and trumpeting how policy forbids ads for “adware-wrapped” installers? Where’s Google’s blog about how many billions of ad-generated dollars they’ve supplied to contentContinue reading “Ad Publishers–A TODO List”
Brotli
2022 Update: Brotli is requested by 94% of browsers, offers great performance, and works amazingly well on Web Assembly code. If you’re still using GZIP today, you should update! Regular readers of my blog know how much I love Zopfli, Google’s compression engine that often shrinks output by 5% or better when compared to theContinue reading “Brotli”
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