Greg Miller wrote: >> account the average number of images/stylesheets/javascript appearing >> in external files. As this should be based on resources requested, not >> pageviews as that is misleading.
I had a look at last month's stats for one of my sites. I use CSS instead of scaled graphics and such. As a result, each page consists of a single html file from my server, a site-wide CSS file, and some offsite ads and statistical trackers. I'll assume perfect caching, since it's rather hard to predict the hit rate. I had an average of 3.5 pageviews for each monthly unique. The CSS file should result in 1 extra request per user. That means 4.5 HTTP requests per user. Given the caching assumption, enabling the favicon pref would increase the number of HTTP requests by exactly one per user, for an increase of 1/4.5 increase in Mozilla-generated HTTP requests. That's not a terrible increase in bandwidth (the exact figures would depend on protocol overhead and such), but web hosts have a nasty habit of charging for disk space, which often includes the space for those log files that shoot up by over 20% if everyone adopts this favicon practice or 7% with the hypothetical 30% marketshare that was mentioned earlier. Of course, whether it's 1% or 1000% isn't really important. Enabling this pref harms the affected sites without performing any useful function. That should be enough.
