CSS: Which is faster for the browser? color:#fff; or color:#ffffff;

Question

First things first, yes I know the render the same color, my question is is a simple query about speed.

This is just a topic of interest regarding optimising page load s

Answer 1

#fff is fewer characters, which is generally better. Network latency and bandwidth matter more than processing time in most cases. For this reason, most CSS compressors will intelligently optimize to the #fff version. The network matters more than parsing speed in this case.

If you're concerned about parsing time, I doubt the difference between the 2 declarations accounts for even 0.005% of total parsing time. There are much bigger bottlenecks that dwarf any speed difference compared to parsing color declarations.

Answer 2

It depends on the implementation. One browser could take 100 times longer for the long version, and another browser would be the other way around.

Write your code so that it's readable, meaning easy to change going forward. If you want fast CSS consider using yui-compressor.