A Better Way to Manage CSS and JS (+ source code)

http://blog.gathercontent.com/combine-and-compress-css-and-js-on-the-fly

by legierski • 14 years ago

14 17 14 years ago

blog.gathercontent.com

pie• 14 years ago

Better than what? This doesn't mention any of the other asset management tools out there.

legierski2• 14 years ago

Better than using only one file with all css inside

Nikkau• 14 years ago

So on the fly you open tons of text files to glue them? Seems i/o intensive.

Why not do the same thing on deploy?

vhf• 14 years ago

+1 Not to mention that a stylesheet named "_dynamic.php?v=blehbleh&lx=12&vs=4.3.3" isn't really welcome.

speg• 14 years ago

We’ll introduce server-side caching in the future, but a goal of this script was to provide users with the latest CSS/JS at all times...

inportb• 14 years ago

Surely, it would be acceptable to microcache for a few seconds? It's rather easy, with nginx in front.

JoelSutherland• 14 years ago

Or, do the best of both worlds.

Get your web server involved and it becomes brainless:

http://www.gethifi.com/blog/Automatic-file-minification-on-n...

brittohalloran• 14 years ago

Rails 3 asset management / precompiling FTW

true_religion• 14 years ago

I've done this before and its far from the best way.

Pre-compilation is better and is CDN safe out-of-the-box.

prisonguard• 14 years ago

out of topic but couldn't help noticing shorthand php tags <?= ?> these make me cringe

aasarava2• 14 years ago

Why? If your server is running PHP and you're not worried about confusion with some other language processor, then why not use shorthand?

prodigal_erik• 14 years ago

It's no longer a valid SGML processing instruction, which largely rules out decades of tools for working with markup.

stinky6132• 14 years ago

While I don't mind the concept proposed, a few things immediately caught my eye:

1) How often are changes made to these CSS files? It seems to me that caching would be far more crucial than any marginal benefit of this practice. Also, what of allowing multiple CSS files to download in parallel via multiple <link> tags?

[nitpicking from here out]

2) Why does his minify code remove all whitespace and then remove whitespace before '{' and after ':'? They're already gone.

3) Removing all whitespace makes the assumption that no whitespace is necessary. This will completely break, among other things, font-family: "Some Embedded Font";

legierski2• 14 years ago

1) CSS on dev setup changes very often. Limiting number of <link>'s was one of the goals.

2) It does not. The ' ' is actually a double space.

3) Point 2)

stinky6132• 14 years ago

Ahh double space, that makes much more sense. Sorry for not looking more closely before posting.

A Better Way to Manage CSS and JS (+ source code)

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