default localIdentName performs poorer than a composed one

[enapupe]

I did some changes on my webpack config file in order to optimize generated css file size. The first move was removing my custom localIdentName and use css-loader's default. Surprisingly, [hash:base64] performs poorer than [name][local][hash:base64:5] considering gzip size.

That's probably because the default hash length is 23 (unique characters) and gzip can't do much about that kind of data (unique). Using a composed localIdentName with a smaller hash portion leaves more space for gzip to work.

Do you guys think it's possible to change the default option? I understand that hash:base64 is probably the safest option but maybe we could get to another safe combination that also has better compression.

FYI this is what I'm getting at this project:

• bundled css total file size:

	[hash:base64]	[name][local][hash:base64:5]
raw	137kb	139kb
gzip	44kb	27kb

[enapupe]

And on another project, left is [hash:base64] , right is [path]-[name]--[local]

[timse]

the point of hashes is, that they are (hopefully) collision safe, therefore they are "hard" to compress.
its basically a "pick one" situation, but maybe one could reduce the length of the hash by default. Not sure mathematically how "short" one can get without risking the chance of a collision on a generally large website

[enapupe]

Maybe using full class names are safer than base64 hashes, and also compresses better?
What would be the config string for complete class names? [path][name][local]? It would be unique, right?

[enapupe]

I just reminded that the html size is also influenced by localIdentName. So the difference might be ever bigger considering all templates and stuff..

[michael-ciniawsky]

@enapupe Can you send PR and discussion moves on there then ? 😛

[michael-ciniawsky]

@enapupe Closed #442 I will come back to the PR soon :)