IISxpress News

IISxpress 2.3.2 is now available

2008-09-15T21:52:00Z

IISxpress 2.3.2 is now available. This is a minor release which includes the following enhancements:

Much improved support for IIS 7 on Windows 2008 and Windows Vista.
Now identifies Google's Chrome Browser.
Updated geographical location database.

To download IISxpress 2.3.2 click here.

For all recent IISxpress news click here to view the news feed or here to see the press releases.

IISxpress 2.3.1 is now available

2008-06-27T21:23:00Z

IISxpress 2.3.1 is now available. This is a minor release which includes the following enhancements:

Much improved support for ColdFusion and PHP under IIS.
ISAPI filter logging no longer requires IIS 5.0 isolation mode to work correctly.

To download IISxpress 2.3.1 click here.

IISxpress 2.3 is now available

2008-06-03T20:06:00Z

IISxpress 2.3 is now available. This release contains the following enhancements:

New Features:

Performance counters
Faster startup on complex web sites

Bug Fixes:

Now correctly handles pre-encoded content on IIS 7
Fixed a stability issue seen on IIS 6

To download IISxpress 2.3 click here.

The following screenshots show the new performance counters in IISxpress:

The screenshot above shows the Windows PerfMon tool displaying the IISxpress performance counters for DotNetNuke, Community Server and Umbraco installed on the same web server.

The screenshot above shows the Add Counter dialog in the PerfMon tool. When IISxpress ISAPI is selected the available IISxpress performance counters and instance names are shown. You can view the IISxpress performance counters from any computer by entering the name of the IISxpress server in the Select counters from computer drop down list and then selecting the counters to view.

IISxpress Compression Studio - a sneak preview

2008-02-28T22:36:00Z

It has been a while since we released IISxpress 2.2, of course we have been working hard on 2.3 but the main development recently has been on a new product called IISxpress Compression Studio which we will release in the next few months. The concept is to create a more feature rich and much more powerful user interface for IISxpress. Take a look at the screenshots below:

The web site view shows the web site folder structures and contents. Here you can enable or disable compression for each file in the folder, analyze compression performance, optimize CSS and JS files and much more.

The live site view is a more powerful version of the view in the IISxpress Status Window. You can show much more data here including: user agent string, client IP, location, browser type, original and compressed sizes, cache hit status and many more.

The optimization window allows you to create customized compression settings for every single file type that exists in your site. Each file can be tuned for optimum performance.

IISxpress Compression Studio will be available for Windows Server 2003 and 2008, with 32 and 64 bit versions available for both platforms.

If you want more information about IISxpress or IISxpress Compression Studio then please email our sales team by clicking here.

IISxpress 2.2 is now available

2007-09-04T20:06:00Z

IISxpress 2.2 is now available, here is a quick rundown of the new features:

The Status Window General tab now shows the number of compression cache hits alongside the other stats.
Responses that were served by the compression cache are now shown with blue text in the history trace window.
Selecting a response in the history trace window now allows you to specify exclusion rules based on that response, you can exclude its extension, content type, location and many other things.
The console application now allows you to exclude individual files from compression. For example you can tell IISxpress to not compress just the file /images/banner.jpg and allow all other files in that directory to be compressed.

New IISxpress online demos now available

2007-08-08T20:32:00Z

Now you can see how easy IISxpress is to use without even downloading and installing it on your computer. We have put together six flash demonstrations showing how to configure extension, content type, URI and IP address rules. To view the demos just click on this link.

72% of the top 50 web sites use HTTP compression - so why don't you?

2007-05-10T09:50:00Z

36 of the top 50 web sites in the world (top 50 according to alexa.com) use HTTP compression to improve the performance of their web sites - so what is holding you back?

These very high usage figures were a surprise even to us - but the message is clear - if HTTP compression scales to meet the business needs of the most popular web sites on the planet then it certainly can have an impact on your internet/intranet web site too.

The figures break down as follows:

Top 5: 100%
Top 10: 80%
Top 20: 75%
Top 30: 73%
Top 40: 72.5%
Top 50: 72%

We believe that IISxpress is the best compression solution for IIS 5, 5.1, 6.0 and now 7.0. The good news is that you can use it non-commercially for FREE, otherwise you can evaluate it for 21 days with no obligation to buy.

The full list follows (1 denotes compression detected):

Number	Site	Compression?
1	yahoo.com	1
2	msn.com	1
3	Google.com	1
4	Youtube.com	1
5	Myspace.com	1
6	Live.com	0
7	Baidu.com	1
8	Orkut.com	1
9	qq.com	1
10	Wikipedia.org	0
11	yahoo.co.jp	0
12	microsoft.com	0
13	sina.com.cn	1
14	megaupload.com	1
15	blogger.com	1
16	ebay.com	1
17	hi5.com	1
18	rapidshare.com	0
19	facebook.com	1
20	google.co.uk	1
21	sohu.com	0
22	163.com	1
23	mail.ru	0
24	fotolog.net	1
25	friendster.com	1
26	google.de	1
27	passport.net	0
28	google.com.br	1
29	amazon.com	1
30	google.fr	1
31	yahoo.com.cn	1
32	bbc.co.uk	0
33	taobao.com	1
34	google.co.jp	1
35	google.es	1
36	wretch.cc	0
37	imdb.com	1
38	uol.com.br	1
39	yandex.ru	0
40	craigslist.org	1
41	go.com	0
42	google.pl	1
43	flickr.com	0
44	tom.com	0
45	google.cl	1
46	skyblog.com	1
47	photobucket.com	1
48	google.cn	1
49	onet.pl	1
50	google.com.mx	1

If you would like to know how we generated this list then please let us know.

IISxpress 2.1 for Windows 2003, Vista, XP and 2000 now available

2007-04-30T20:20:00Z

You can now download IISxpress 2.1 for Windows Vista, 2003, XP and 2000 from the download area. This version will also install and run on Windows Server "Longhorn" Beta 3 (build 6001).

The major features of this release are:

Now supports Windows Vista RTM and Windows Server "Longhorn" Beta 3.
Compression Cache - static content will be stored in the cache allowing for very fast compressed responses.
User-definable CPU Loading Model - on a multi-CPU system you can specify which CPU cores are used for compression tasks.
Update check - check that you have the latest version of the software.
The installer and all binaries are now signed to prevent tampering.

Screenshots:

The compression cache stores the most recent compressed responses. You can specify the size of the cache and the number of responses to store. Responses served from the cache can be up to 10 times faster than a full compression pass.

Specify the way IISxpress uses your CPUs for compression tasks. Select from Automatic, Manual or None. In Automatic mode IISxpress will allocate a CPU for each response. In Manual mode you specify which CPU cores IISxpress is allowed to use. When None is selected the Operating System manages the division of the compression tasks.

When you use IISxpress you can control which parts of your web sites are compressed. Here all the folders below FlexWiki will not be compressed (they are shown in red).

IISxpress 2.1 will be FREE for Windows Vista, XP and 2000

2007-02-16T11:03:00Z

Our next release of IISxpress, version 2.1, will now be available for FREE for all users of Windows Vista, Windows XP Professional and Windows 2000 Professional.

Now all workstation users can run the best compression solution for IIS for absolutely nothing - no catches, no unwanted advertising, no spam, no spyware, just 100% of the performance and 100% of the featureset of the full product.

You can download the beta version of IISxpress 2.1 from the download area of our web site.

IISxpress API 2.1 Beta 1 is now available

2007-02-05T23:34:00Z

We have just released a .NET API for IISxpress. This beta release allows you to integrate compression statistics information into your web site. Future releases will include the ability to query per-response historical compression information.

The ZIP archive contains a PDF file detailing how to install the files on your system, a CHM (Compiled Help) file which documents the call interface, the .NET Assembly file and a sample ASP.NET (ASPX) file. You can view the output of the sample by clicking here.

This release is for 32bit installations of IISxpress 2.0 and 2.1 Beta 1 only.

To visit our beta download area click here.

Not convinced by HTTP compression, try this....

2006-08-21T19:13:00Z

So, you need to be convinced by HTTP compression or you are just curious what impact it has on download speed? Just for you we have created two demonstration web pages so you can see for yourself what an improvement to the end user experience compression makes.

These two test pages demonstrate, side by side, a download of uncompressed and compressed data. Using JavaScript the pages time each download and print the result of the test on the screen. The compressed download should win each time since the data actually downloaded is significantly smaller than the uncompressed data.

The test data for Test1 is approximately 423KB in size, Test2 is bigger at 3.2MB.

When you run the test your browser will request identical data from two different directories on the web server. IISxpress is configured to only compress the data from the compressed directory. IISxpress will compress this data on-the-fly, while passing through the uncompressed data in its original form.

We recommend that you use Internet Explorer to perform the test since it will reliably retieve the test data from the server when you press CTRL-F5 to refresh the page. If you hit just F5 or select refresh from the menu the content will be loaded from your browser's cache rather than from the web server.

Files this large are not too typical of web site content, however for a single page with many different asset files (JS, CSS, images, etc) the size of the total page can be a lot bigger than just the HTML. So overall it's a close approximation of the real world user experience.