How to enable either Gzip or Deflate compression via .htaccess?

How to enable either Gzip or Deflate compression via .htaccess and which one is best these days? Code examples needed.

From serverfault purpler

• Here you go - this article should help.

  purpler : i tried that but both PageSpeed and YSlow dont show grade A. Also, http://www.gidnetwork.com/tools/gzip-test.php dont say that compression is on..

  Iain : Do you know if the AllowOverride directive is restricting access to htaccess or not ?
  From Iain

• See the Apache mod_deflate documentation, specifically, the "compress everything except images" example. It has worked well for me and would be put into an .htaccess file as follows:

  <IfModule mod_deflate.c>
          # Insert filter
          SetOutputFilter DEFLATE
  
          # Netscape 4.x has some problems...
          BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html
  
          # Netscape 4.06-4.08 have some more problems
          BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip
  
          # MSIE masquerades as Netscape, but it is fine
          # BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html
  
          # NOTE: Due to a bug in mod_setenvif up to Apache 2.0.48
          # the above regex won't work. You can use the following
          # workaround to get the desired effect:
          BrowserMatch \bMSI[E] !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html
  
          # Don't compress images
          SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \
          \.(?:gif|jpe?g|png)$ no-gzip dont-vary
  
          # Make sure proxies don't deliver the wrong content
          Header append Vary User-Agent env=!dont-vary
  </IfModule>
  

  And, of course, make sure that you have the following in your httpd.conf file to enable mod_deflate:

  LoadModule deflate_module libexec/apache2/mod_deflate.so
  

  From morgant