Deliver gzipped content with htaccess and precompressed files

To get a page which loads fast it's possible to use gzip to deliver the files to the client.

1st we need to compress these files:
logon to your server via SSH or something similar, browse to the directory which contains the file(s) to compress
gzip -c filename.ext > filename.ext.gz
now you got a file with the following scheme:
blabla.css.gz
which has the same content as before, but should be significant smaller now.
The 2nd step is to create a file named .htaccess (note the . before htaccess)
in this file write the following

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Accept-Encoding} .*gzip.*
RewriteRule ^/(.*)\.js$ /$1.js.gz [L]
RewriteRule ^/(.*)\.css$ /$1.css.gz [L]
AddEncoding x-gzip text.gz

Save it in the directory where the .gz file(s) from before are stored.

If someone which has a gzip-capable browser (90+% support it) now accesses that file, the amount of data to transfer is less than before. For example a javascript-file with around 80kB before now has 20kB, which is only 25% of the original file, woohoo. Have Fun!

Credits:
http://www.alinki.com/de/blog/archives/27