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by thibaultamartin 340 days ago
Fair questions.

For the first one, the main benefits of Astro over static html and css (for my use cases) are the ability to include components and enforce the properties that must be passed. A typical example would be [here][0] where I define a layout for the whole website, and then [on each page that uses it](https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-conf-website/blob/main/...) I have to pass the right properties. Doable by hand, but it's great to have tooling that can yell at me if I forgot to do it.

Content Collections also let me grab content from e.g. markdown or json and build pages automatically from it. The [Content Collections docs][1] are fairly straightforward.

As for performance issues, I've spent quite a bit of time on the countryside where connectivity was an issue and every extra request was definitely noticeable, hence the value of inlining it (you load one html file that has the css embedded, instead of loading an html file that then tells your browser to load an extra css file). The same can be true in some malls where I live.

[0]: https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-conf-website/blob/main/... [1]: https://docs.astro.build/en/guides/content-collections/
1 comments
mbirth 340 days ago
Embedded CSS circumvents proper caching of the CSS. Also, with HTTP/2 your client can download several resources in one transaction. So, it shouldn’t make much of a difference with CSS embedded or separate. Just, that embedded CSS has to be loaded over and over again whereas a separate file can be cached and reused from the local cache.
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MrJohz 339 days ago
Caching is only relevant if you think your site is going to be visited by the same person often enough that the cache is worthwhile. If the assets are small that HTTP overhead is non-negligible, and if your CSS would get few enough cache hits, then you're often better off just inlining stuff.

HTTP/2 does not change this equation much. Server Push is dead, and bypasses caching anyway. Early Hints can help if configured correctly, but still require the client to make the request roundtrip to fetch that asset.

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