[OpenLayers-Dev] Size of Library / Packing

[Christopher Schmidt]

On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 10:43:16AM -0600, Erik Uzureau wrote:
> I came across the following quote in a blog entry today:
> 
> "The initial implementation I was working with utilized
> OpenLayers<http://openlayers.org/>,
> ... Unfortunately the size of the library seems to be constantly increasing
> (~200K in the last year) and currently weighs in at 560K uncompressed ... "
> [1]

It looks like the place you found that is a spam aggregator, reblogging
URLs to gain traffic; or at least someone who is improperly crediting
their source. The original of this article is available at:

http://blog.kapilt.com/2008/11/30/sharing-large-images-openlayers-gsiv-modestmaps-deepzoom-and-python/   

"OpenLayers supports custom build profiles including only the pieces you
care about. A simple map — just dragging and WMS tiles — clocks
in at about 110k — and has been within 20% of that for most of the
2.x series (now two years running). Information on using the build tools
to build your own build are available at
http://trac.openlayers.org/wiki/Profiles . Once you take the 110k and
run it through gzip, you’re down to ~25k — not that much larger
than the binary ModestMaps builds that I checked out (which clocked in
at 18kb, but didn’t compress much/at all with gzip)."

So, compared to a simple Flash implementation, with none of the
hooks/bells/whistles that OL has, we're about 30% larger, once you get d
own to brass tacks. At that point, you're smaller than a single map tile
from just about any mapping service difference, so compressing the
library itself much further doesn't gain you much.

Regards,
-- 
Christopher Schmidt
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