Book excerpt: If you want to attract and retain users in the booming mobile services market, you need a quick-loading app that won’t churn through their data plans. The key is to compress multimedia and other data into smaller files, but finding the right method is tricky. This witty book helps you understand how data compression algorithms work—in theory and practice—so you can choose the best solution among all the available compression tools. With tables, diagrams, games, and as little math as possible, authors Colt McAnlis and Aleks Haecky neatly explain the fundamentals. Learn how compressed files are better, cheaper, and faster to distribute and consume, and how they’ll give you a competitive edge. Learn why compression has become crucial as data production continues to skyrocket Know your data, circumstances, and algorithm options when choosing compression tools Explore variable-length codes, statistical compression, arithmetic numerical coding, dictionary encodings, and context modeling Examine tradeoffs between file size and quality when choosing image compressors Learn ways to compress client- and server-generated data objects Meet the inventors and visionaries who created data compression algorithms