The following remarks are more technical in nature. If you are only going to use Web content and not produce it, you can skip this. However, if you are going to be producing and serving Web pages, either from your own server or someone elses, there are some technical aspects of file management and transmission that you will probably need to know. For some types of text files efficient compression may reduce the size of the file by factors of 10 or more. For binary files that are already stored in a highly efficient format like GIF files, compression will not have much effect.
Some software applications combine archiving and compression functions.
The resulting encoded file may then be sent by means such as electronic mail that do not normally support the transfer of binary files, and decoded on the other end to yield the original binary file. The details of each of these procedures will depend on how your computer is set up and how your server is set up. Therefore, we strongly advise that you consult the administrator of your particular server or another local guru for details on how to manage files and transfer them between your machine and the server. However, we include some rather generic material here to get you oriented, and to give you some terminology to use when you consult your local gurus. The resulting files normally have a .sit extensions.