How To Minimize Your Javascript and CSS Files for Faster Page Loads

http://www.maxkiesler.com/index.php/weblog/comments/how_to_minimize_your_javascript_and_css_files_for_faster_page_loads/

by chaostheory • 19 years ago

16 11 19 years ago

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DanielBMarkham4• 19 years ago

Excellent resource. Thanks.

edw5193• 19 years ago

I've always had an instinctual resistance to using lots of outside building blocks unless there was a real compelling reason. Now, it sounds like using javascript libraries like scriptalicious causes performance problems. Did I read this right?

Also, I understand the need for obfuscation, but to improve page load speed? How?

DanielBMarkham4• 19 years ago

Yes you read it right. Anything you load into the browser, both in terms of size and additional http requests, is a performance hit.

Obfuscation helps improve performance speed by making the variables as small as possible while avoiding name collisions. In practice this probably means a file full of one-letter variables, instead of things like elemResult

Every byte that is in your Javascript that has to be downloaded to the client is another millisecond or more of response time. This is the reason why I wouldn't use huge honking JS libraries unless I was really sure I needed them (call me old-fashioned). Interestingly enough, looks like there is a case to be made for package libraries, where you download one file and it explodes into both the CSS and JS part of your app. Makes sense to me, although I've never tried it.

edw5193• 19 years ago

Smaller variables to have less going down the line? Sounds like striking out the pitcher to me.

One of my constant struggles has been where to build HTML that has to be built on the fly, server or client? On the server, lots more bytes to ship down the line but less javascript to run once it gets there. On the client, 10% as much data to send, but then lots of javascript to run to assemble the HTML. Anyone else ever struggle with this problem?

pc• 19 years ago

"Every byte that is in your Javascript that has to be downloaded to the client is another millisecond or more of response time."

How many people still use 1KB/s net connections?

newzie• 19 years ago

if you're using rails, just use the asset packager plugin. it's awesome. and gzip your javascript and css -- use mod_deflate if you're using apache. that's all you really need. and mod_expires, if you want to get an 'A' grade from the yslow firefox/firebug extension.

chaostheory• 19 years ago

I could be wrong but with rails 2.0 it's built-in - so no more need for bundling plugins once it's out (unless you want javascript minfication)

davidw• 19 years ago

I used YUI compressor with langpop, which has a big chunk of javascript:

http://journal.dedasys.com/articles/2007/11/07/yui-compresso...

How To Minimize Your Javascript and CSS Files for Faster Page Loads

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