Does formatted HTML takes up more space

Question

If one views the source code of http://www.google.com, it's highly minified. Even the html part. I am just wondering if formatted html takes up more space than minified HTML.

All I can think of is, that in formatted html, the characters : spaces, tabs and newline take space. And that is the only scope where html minification can save memory.

Answer 1

Yes, minifying HTML, CSS, and JavaScript by removing spaces, tabs, newlines, and comments saves on bandwidth cost.

In addition to minifying the HTML, you should also be certain your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript is being GZIP'ed when being sent over the wire for even better performance. For more information about GZIP, read: http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html#gzip

I would also like to add that it is very important to think about bandwidth cost and page speed to any degree this day in age. Mobile web users are on a large upward swing. Even if you are not expecting a large mobile draw from your site, you are doing a disserve to those trying to access your site on their mobile 3G devices by not taking the proper considerations into bandwidth cost and speed.

Answer 2

Yes, your thinking is correct. Removing whitespace and compressing the HTML will result in smaller download sizes.

If you'd like to see test cases for HTML minification, check out this blog post on Perfection Kills.

Excerpt:

Original size: 217KB (35.8KB gzipped)
Minified size: 206.6KB (34.3KB gzipped)
Savings: 10.4KB (1.5KB gzipped)

Minifying home page of amazon.com saves about 10KB with uncompressed document, and only 1.5KB with compressed one.

Answer 3

Yes, there’s a difference. But for many (most?) websites this difference is not worth thinking about, because (1) the server will probably serve the HTML gzipped anyway, and (2) you don’t have enough pageviews to make the difference substantial. (Google does.)