• Reported by Nate

I'm sure many savvy readers ran into this already, as I've been out to lunch again and missed it last week: Adrian Holovaty put together a tool for measuring a content to code ratio he calls getContentSize. It measures page size with and without markup (no images or attached CSS, javascript measured in either case). It raises interesting questions because the tool does not reward good coding practices, but takes a wholesale look at how much of the data you're transfering is what folks are reading, and how much is markup related. Ostentiably it does favor less bloated code, in that heavily nested table sites are more likely to have higher non-content ratios, but it also give poor marks for a long list of links (which raises the question of how valuable a blog roll is when considering content for instance).
So how does this site fair? A pitiful 28.5% content! I am greatful for this tool, it has caused me to take a good look at why 71.5% of this site is markup, where and why all the bloat? Two main reasons: presentational markup which is really not necessary (and will be updated), and because I've flanked the weblog with two columns of links.
Kudos to Adrian for providing this thought provoking tool, and thanks to Meryl for linking to it.
[11/13 - fixed Mr. Holovaty's Name, incorrectly reported because I tend to be a bonehead]