Title: HTTP requests
Last modified: August 20, 2016

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# HTTP requests

 *  Resolved [denied123](https://wordpress.org/support/users/denied123/)
 * (@denied123)
 * [13 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/http-requests/)
 * This is probably something that has been said mentioned before but I will repeat
   that with my own words again.
 * As far as syntax highlighting this is by far the best plugin out there at this
   point. The sad thing is the huge amount of Http requests it adds to a website.
   The images for the toolbar (not using sprites) and the js/css files alone add
   an additional 15+ requests when trying to load the website, which for a code 
   highlight plugin alone, that is pretty much unacceptable.
 * The solution provided by the author up to this point isn’t better either. The
   suggestion to use/or switch to another cache plugin just for one plugin isn’t
   exactly the best solution. Not to mention minifying doesn’t help either since
   WP Minify breaks the plugin and you need to exclude crayon.js in order for the
   plugin to work properly (and the rest of the files still don’t get minified properly).
 * My findings so far using the combination of WP Super Cache and WP Minify is that
   by using this plugin alone takes my website http requests from 27 to 43 which
   is beyond reasonable.
 * My hope is that the author can actually put these issues high in the priority
   list as I assume there a lot of people (including me) that like the plugin but
   cannot use it because they can’t justify the performance loss.
 * [http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/crayon-syntax-highlighter/](http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/crayon-syntax-highlighter/)

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 19 total)

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 *  Plugin Author [akarmenia](https://wordpress.org/support/users/akarmenia/)
 * (@akarmenia)
 * [13 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/http-requests/#post-3517388)
 * Hi there,
    That’s understandable. I did a quick test on my own site:
 * With Crayon: 36 requests, 3.76 seconds
    With Crayon: 37 requests, 5.66 seconds
 * Without Crayon: 30 requests, 3 seconds
    Without Crayon: 30 requests, 2.46 seconds
 * But if I turn off caching it takes about 9-14 seconds without and with Crayon.
 * So Crayon seems to add about 1-2 seconds for the 7 extra requests on my own site
   if I’ve enabled my browser cache.
 * One way this could be improved is to create a sprite of the images for the toolbar.
   For the other requests however, it’s not as straight forward:
 * The themes and fonts are loaded dynamically – minifying them together woud be
   infeasible due to their many combinations, but they can be minified separately.
 * Some scripts only load when they are needed – such as the tag editor on the front
   end. Should I minify those individually, or minify all their permutations: with
   tag editor, without tag editor?
 * If I get a reply here to which approach is desired I’m happy to pursue this and
   compile all my scripts into minified js each time they are modified.
 *  Thread Starter [denied123](https://wordpress.org/support/users/denied123/)
 * (@denied123)
 * [13 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/http-requests/#post-3517391)
 * Hey akarmenia,
 * Thanks getting back at me. First and easiest step would probably making a sprite
   of the images. I took the initiative to combine them to for you, but I’m sure
   you are more than capable of doing that as well if you want to make it the way
   you like.
 * [http://i.imgur.com/bTAv5z8.png](http://i.imgur.com/bTAv5z8.png) normal size 
   ones
    [http://i.imgur.com/bLmC6ZG.png](http://i.imgur.com/bLmC6ZG.png) double
   size ones [http://i.imgur.com/vOw5cfd.png](http://i.imgur.com/vOw5cfd.png) all
   of them
 * Now for the tricky part. Since you are using a custom font I don’t think there
   is an easy way around the .wolf files. Maybe if the default configuration didn’t
   involve a font that forced an 20kb request ? That way the users will still have
   the option to choose a custom font if they wanted to and the default settings
   will not cause the server to load a 20kb file as soon as the plugin is installed.
   So basically letting the user choose between beauty and performance with performance
   as the default option. Although since a lot of plugins don’t use a custom font
   I’d say it won’t look that bad.
 * The crayon.js request is acceptable so I don’t think you will need to do anything
   about it. Is it necessary for util.js and jquery.popup.js to load separately ?
 * And finally the .css files. With the default settings my website loads 4 .css
   files, is it possible to cut down on the number ? The current files that are 
   being loaded in my case are:
    classic.css monaco.css crayon_style.css global_style.
   css
 * As soon as you give me a bit more input as to why some files need to be loaded
   separately I will try to think if there is a valid work around for it. But as
   you can see, even with the default settings and “Attempt to load Crayon’s CSS
   and JavaScript only when needed” checked the plugin loads 6-8 images separately,
   3 javascript files, 4 css files and a font (.wolf) file.
 * Also something you might want to look into is that a lot of your links in the
   options are broken as they point to “[http://error404.000webhost.com/?&#8221](http://error404.000webhost.com/?&#8221);(
   I’m assuming the place you were hosting the documentation files no longer exist?).
 * Waiting for your response 🙂
 *  Plugin Author [akarmenia](https://wordpress.org/support/users/akarmenia/)
 * (@akarmenia)
 * [13 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/http-requests/#post-3517392)
 * Thanks for all your help! I’ve released 2.1.3 which fixes several issues, and
   I’ll be working towards a fix for these issues in the next week. I’ll update 
   here on my progress.
 *  Thread Starter [denied123](https://wordpress.org/support/users/denied123/)
 * (@denied123)
 * [13 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/http-requests/#post-3517393)
 * Great job, glad to see you are actively working on improving your plugin 🙂
 * I’ve reinstalled your plugin trying to work around some of the issues above myself
   till you find the time to work on them yourself.
 * Another easy request. Is it possible to make the margin settings to accept negative
   values ? Margin of 0 doesn’t behave the same as WP-Syntax (the old addon I was
   using) since it’s still leaves a space of around 10px whereas previously the 
   code in the post was just below the paragraph.
 * Also something I noticed a few days ago is that when I reinstalled the plugin,
   a few posts (namely the last two current posts) didn’t get affected by crayon’s
   styling. If I simply copy/paste the post into a new one then it works properly.
   There is nothing in the logs that can indicate what the problem is either.
 * edit: Fixed the above issue. Seems I had to use “Refresh” in the plugins options.
 *  Plugin Author [akarmenia](https://wordpress.org/support/users/akarmenia/)
 * (@akarmenia)
 * [13 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/http-requests/#post-3517394)
 * That means that the list of posts containing Crayons needs updating.
 * [http://aramk.com/crayon/internal-post-management-crayon/](http://aramk.com/crayon/internal-post-management-crayon/)
 * If you write more posts and then enable Crayon, it won’t automatically refresh
   this list. But I can make it do so after an activation/install. Nice catch, I’ll
   remember to look into this also.
 *  Plugin Author [akarmenia](https://wordpress.org/support/users/akarmenia/)
 * (@akarmenia)
 * [13 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/http-requests/#post-3517399)
 * The activation issue has been fixed here: [https://github.com/aramkocharyan/crayon-syntax-highlighter/commit/febb705ec9b465158b0ef14628b638881e907621](https://github.com/aramkocharyan/crayon-syntax-highlighter/commit/febb705ec9b465158b0ef14628b638881e907621)
 *  Thread Starter [denied123](https://wordpress.org/support/users/denied123/)
 * (@denied123)
 * [13 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/http-requests/#post-3517400)
 * Good job, I’m sure a few others would fall into that trap at some point 🙂
 * Please “fix” the margin as well, so it can accept negative values. I’m assuming
   it should only take a few minutes. Currently if you use a negative value it converts
   it to a positive one.
 * Then as soon as you can find the time to remedy some of the issues we mentioned
   on the starting posts I will be out of suggestions as I will be fully satisfied
   with everything this plugin has to offer 🙂
 *  Plugin Author [akarmenia](https://wordpress.org/support/users/akarmenia/)
 * (@akarmenia)
 * [13 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/http-requests/#post-3517402)
 * Do you really want negative margin values? That’ll cause it to move upwards. 
   I suppose since it’s perfectly valid CSS it’s arguably valid to have though.
 * Please download the beta and check if it works for you: [https://github.com/aramkocharyan/crayon-syntax-highlighter/](https://github.com/aramkocharyan/crayon-syntax-highlighter/)
 *  Thread Starter [denied123](https://wordpress.org/support/users/denied123/)
 * (@denied123)
 * [13 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/http-requests/#post-3517403)
 * Ideally I wouldn’t mind avoiding negative values, although it’s not that bad 
   it’s not a recommended practice. But for some reason magin of 0 doesn’t behave
   as it should.
 * Example:
 *     ```
       <p style="margin-bottom:0px">test paragraph</p>
       <pre lang="php">test code</pre>
       ```
   
 * The above example behaves properly with other code highlighting plugins (namely
   wp-syntax that I was using before) but with Crayon’s the same above code still
   behaves like it has a margin of 5-10px.
 * edit: The beta version accepts negative values properly, thank you. Also, after
   testing a bit, it seems like margin (top) with value 0 (or any other value below
   12) behaves like margin 12 (the default).
 *  Plugin Author [akarmenia](https://wordpress.org/support/users/akarmenia/)
 * (@akarmenia)
 * [13 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/http-requests/#post-3517404)
 * I’ll take a look at that. In the meantime, I’ve added a branch for minifying 
   and you can test it here:
 * [https://github.com/aramkocharyan/crayon-syntax-highlighter/tree/minify](https://github.com/aramkocharyan/crayon-syntax-highlighter/tree/minify)
 * All the JS on the front end, and part of it on the admin, is now minified with
   Google Closure (there’s also a build script in js/).
 *  Plugin Author [akarmenia](https://wordpress.org/support/users/akarmenia/)
 * (@akarmenia)
 * [13 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/http-requests/#post-3517405)
 * Tested it – margin is set properly by Crayon. It’s just that due to the paragraph
   tag above it, there’s still 18px above it. Use the negative values to reduce 
   that if you like.
 *  Thread Starter [denied123](https://wordpress.org/support/users/denied123/)
 * (@denied123)
 * [13 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/http-requests/#post-3517406)
 * Yea but since we are setting the paragraph margin-bot to 0 and Crayons top to
   0 shouldn’t that make them be exactly close to each other ? The odd thing about
   it is that (at least in my case, not sure if your tests show the same results)
   regardless if you set margin-top to 0/2/5/10/12px the distance between the p 
   element and the code is always the same.
 * As you mentioned the css does change accordingly to what you set the margin, 
   based on what inspect object shows, but visually there is no difference. Also
   higher values than 12px show properly, the same with negative values.
 * In other words, I’m trying to figure out why this happens since the css values
   look to have been set correctly.
 * p elements margin-bot is 0
    crayon-<random id> margin-top is 0 (when set to 0)
 * So in theory that 18px above the code shouldn’t exist isn’t that right ?
 *  Plugin Author [akarmenia](https://wordpress.org/support/users/akarmenia/)
 * (@akarmenia)
 * [13 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/http-requests/#post-3517407)
 * Not sure about that. Using a negative margin worked, but there shouldn’t be any
   spacing if both margins are 0. Ensure this is the case in the chrome inspector
   and check some other properties to find the culprit.
 *  Thread Starter [denied123](https://wordpress.org/support/users/denied123/)
 * (@denied123)
 * [13 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/http-requests/#post-3517408)
 * I am assuming you are not having the same issue in that case ?
 * I just noticed in the source code that for some odd reason there is another <
   p> element above the pre tag which shouldn’t be there. So I’m not sure where 
   that one comes from but it explains the issue since my <p> tags have a default
   bottom margin. I’m not sure where that extra paragraph comes from as it’s not
   in my post code.
 * Does Crayons adds an extra <p> element above the ‘pre’ div ? Since all my posts
   have an extra <p> tag above the ‘pre’ tags now which shouldn’t be there.
 *  Plugin Author [akarmenia](https://wordpress.org/support/users/akarmenia/)
 * (@akarmenia)
 * [13 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/http-requests/#post-3517409)
 * That’s added by WordPress: [http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/wpautop](http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/wpautop)

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 * 19 replies
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 * Last reply from: [akarmenia](https://wordpress.org/support/users/akarmenia/)
 * Last activity: [13 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/http-requests/page/2/#post-3517418)
 * Status: resolved