ob_gzhandler

[sidsel]

I have a forum which create some pretty big pages and therefore take some time to download.

After I added ob_start("ob_gzhandler"); the speed has really increased.

Is there any downside by compressing the outout? Does all browsers support this function?

From which version of Explorer, netscape and opera is this function supported?

[steadyguy]

You can check the headers for which file types can be accepted ... send the compressed file if gzip is acceptable (probably not at all on IE), or the uncompressed version otherwise - then you'll never have to worry about which version of which browser the user is using. Though browsers can lie in the headers, they don't usually do so with the Accept-Encoding header as there's no really good reason to do so.