AddEncoding x-gzip .css blanks CSS files?

I just want to compress CSS and other file types using Apache 1.3

[JAB Creations]

I've been trying to find out how to compress files by type for Apache 1.3 but I am mostly seeing 2.0 documentation. Went to Apache's site at this url for example...
[httpd.apache.org...]

I tried this in my .htaccess file...

AddEncoding x-gzip .css

Not sure if that is how the syntax should look and I would please like some help clarifying how I should do this. I also came across issues regarding backwards compatibility. I'm server for Gecko 1.0+, IE 5.0+, and Opera 4.0+ (none of these require XHTML cloaking, just extra CSS includes) on the PC platform in case there are any issues I need to be made aware of with those browsers/version as far as handling compression is concerned. However I'm not worried about browsers outside that range on the PC platform. Thanks!

- John

[jdMorgan]

I've been experimenting with this MIME-type stuff recently, too.

Generally, you need to make sure the client can accept gzip encoding by checking the HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING header. If the client says it can accept the compressed format, then serve (rewrite to) stylesheet.css.gz instead of serving stylesheet.css.

Basically,

RewriteCond %{HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING} gzip
RewriteRule ^(([^.]+\.)+)css$ /$1css.gz [L]

Then mark only .gz files with the application/x-gzip MIME-type, and leave .css files as text/plain.

Remember that the AddType directive works off the served filetype, so if you rewrite to stylesheet.css.gz, the URL is /stylesheet.css, the filename is stylesheet.css.gz, and the MIME type is application/x-gzip. If you don't do the rewrite, then the URL is /stylesheet.css, the filename is stylesheet.css and the MIME type is text/plain.

Jim

[JAB Creations]

Thank you very much Jim, though unfortunately this breaks Apache 2 (which I test with locally) and did not seem to have any effect on my live server which runs Apache 1.3x from what I observed? Should this only work on 1.3x?

- John

[jdMorgan]

Actually, I didn't test that specific code. How did it "break" on Apache 2.0? -- Was the variable undefined, or was there some other problem?

Jim

[JAB Creations]

I just get an error 500. Is there a string I can use in .htaccess to give a more meaningful error message to help solve the issue? Thank you for your response.

- John

[jdMorgan]

Meaningful error messages are logged in the server error log. Correlating that info (by timestamp) with the access log often nails down the problem pretty thoroughly.

Jim

[JAB Creations]

Ok *duh* LoL, here we go...

[Tue Jun 12 00:33:38 2007] [alert] [client 127.0.0.1]?:/../../../.htaccess: Invalid command 'RewriteCond', perhaps misspelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration, referer: [localhost...]

I'm running XAMPP and I haven't modified anything except for the path to the public folder.

- John

[jdMorgan]

mod_rewrite is not installed or not loaded, then...

Look for AddModule and LoadModule directives referring to mod_rewrite.so and uncomment them if they're commented-out.

Jim