We study the compressed representation of a ranked tree by a straight-line program (SLP) for its preorder traversal string, and compare it with the previously studied representation by straight-line context-free tree grammars (also known as tree straight-line programs or TSLPs). Although SLPs may be exponentially more succinct than TSLPs, we show that many simple tree queries can still be performed efficiently on SLPs, such as computing the height of a tree, tree navigation, or evaluation of Boolean expressions. Other problems like pattern matching and evaluation of tree automata become intractable.