Select tool to minimize JavaScript and CSS size
- by Michael Freidgeim
There are multiple ways and techniques how to combine and minify JS and CSS files.The good number of links can be found in http://stackoverflow.com/questions/882937/asp-net-script-and-css-compression and in http://www.hanselman.com/blog/TheImportanceAndEaseOfMinifyingYourCSSAndJavaScriptAndOptimizingPNGsForYourBlogOrWebsite.aspx There are 2 major approaches- do it during build or at run-time.In our application there are multiple user-controls, each of them required different JS or CSS files, and they loaded dynamically in the different combinations. We decided that loading all JS or CSS files for each page is not a good idea, but for each page we need to load different set of files.Based on this combining files on the build stage does not looks feasible.After Reviewing different links I’ve decided that squishit should fit to our needs. http://www.codethinked.com/squishit-the-friendly-aspnet-javascript-and-css-squisherDifferent limitations of using SquishIt.We had some browser specific CSS files, that loaded conditionally depending of browser type(i.e IE and all other browsers). We had to put them in separate bundles,For Resources and AXD files we decide to use HttpModule and HttpHandler created by Mads KristensenTo GZIP html we are using wwWebUtils.GZipEncodePage() http://www.west-wind.com/weblog/posts/2007/Feb/05/More-on-GZip-compression-with-ASPNET-Content Just swap the order of which encoding you apply to start by asking for deflate support and then GZip afterwards.Additional tips about SquishIt.Use CDN: https://groups.google.com/group/squishit/browse_thread/thread/99f3b61444da9ad1Support intellisense and generate bundle in codebehind http://tech.kipusoep.nl/2010/07/23/umbraco-45-visual-studio-2010-dotless-jquery-vsdoc-squishit-masterpages/Links about other Libraries that were consideredA few links from http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5288656/which-one-has-better-minification-between-squishit-and-combres2.Net 4.5 will have out-of-the-box tools for JS/CSS combining.http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2011/11/27/new-bundling-and-minification-support-asp-net-4-5-series.aspx . It suggests default bundle of subfolder, but also seems supporting similar to squishit explicitly specified files.http://www.codeproject.com/KB/aspnet/combres2.aspx config XML file can specify expiry etchttps://github.com/andrewdavey/cassette http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7026029/alternatives-to-cassetteDynamically loaded JS files requireJS http://requirejs.org/docs/start.html http://www.west-wind.com/weblog/posts/2008/Jul/07/Inclusion-of-JavaScript-FilesPack and minimize your JavaScript code sizeYUI Compressor (from Yahoo)JSMin (by Douglas Crockford)ShrinkSafe (from Dojo library)Packer (by Dean Edwards)RadScriptManager & RadStyleSheetManager -fromTeleric(not free)Tools to optimize performance:PageSpeed tools family http://code.google.com/intl/ru/speed/page-speed/download.htmlv
