Is it OK to use css optimizers to before to make site live. When we can't to any other server side compression techniques (gzip, combining, sass, less etc)
I want to make CSS file short and readable. How to use these tools without loosing css functionality. what options we should use and what not.
Have you used any? Which is best tool and why?
To prevent losing the readability of the css files and hustle of managing a compressed and non compressed CSS is to do it dynamically.
There are software available that intercept IIS requests and dynamically compress and combine CSS, Javascript and even Images. Checkout http://www.aptimize.com/
If you want short and readable css, I would highly recommend checking out something like sass or less.
CSS optimizers are usually there to bring down the file size of the css file so less is getting pushed over the wire (unfortunately, that tends to mean the file becomes unreadable)
Personally, I use sass relgiously, and have a build task that calls out to YUI compressor to compress my css (and javascript) files before they get deployed.
Are you using rails? if you are, you can use bundle-fu
http://code.google.com/p/bundle-fu/
it basically squishes all your stylesheets together on the fly. You don't have to worry anything getting broken.