online CSS optimizer?

Question

Is there an online CSS optimizer equivalent to Googles JavaScript Closure Optimizer.

I've found plenty of CSS compressors online, but I'm looking for a CSS optimizer ... where it actually removes redundant/conflicting attributes

Answer 1

http://www.csscompressor.com gives an audit of the changes it has made.

Be careful when using some hacks eg for IE6, as they may cause a failure

Answer 2

You could make such a service by using the relevant parts of an open source rendering engine such as WebKit or Gecko.

Infact....

Answer 3

CSSTIDY

never used it myself though

it is open sourced and provides you the ability to use it with php, it also uses no regular expresions so is compatible with css2

Answer 4

Check out Dust-me it's a firefox extension that will at least remove unused selectors. I suspect it might be a combination of these that'll get the job done.

Answer 5

Personally, I wouldn't trust any CSS optimizer such as you describe. Any time I have ever tried one, and I've tried a few and even tried to write one, it has resulted in CSS problems on pages I've created.

For one to actually remove conflicting selectors, it would really have to understand how you would like such conflicts resolved — which ones are "right" and which are "wrong" — and that is something you have to eyeball to decide. Even removing "redundant" selectors is fraught with peril, unless you have repeated selectors verbatim. And any CSS hacks you have employed (not good practice, but sometimes unavoidable) can be destroyed.

I'm not saying this kind of thing is impossible, just that it's VERY hard to do and you should absolutely expect to regression-test all your pages after using one.

Answer 6

Online tools based on csstidy: www.codebeautifier.com or www.cleancss.com.

And perhaps CSS Redundancy Checker might be useful for you. It's a Ruby script that will take CSS rules, and a set of HTML files, and will tell you what you aren’t actually using.