JavaScript : Good tool to 'minify' jQuery based js files

Question

Hi,

We are using jQuery in our project. We have numerous custom javascript files in our web-app that have UDFs utilizing the jQuery features. We need to reduce the size (as a part of performance improvement activities) and I am looking for a reliable 'minifier' for these files (it would be great if the same tool could minify the CSS files too)

We tried JSLint and JSMin - but JSLint does not complete and throws many exceptions as soon as it encounters jQuery code.

Regards,
- Ashish

Answer 1

minify does the job. There's also YUI Compressor, but I've never tried it.

From the minify website:

Minify is a PHP5 app that can combine multiple CSS or Javascript files, compress their contents (i.e. removal of unnecessary whitespace/comments), and serve the results with HTTP encoding (gzip/deflate) and headers that allow optimal client-side caching. This helps you follow several of Yahoo!'s Rules for High Performance Web Sites.

Answer 2

The YUI Compressor is a tool I use, it compresses both JS and CSS well, and it is written in Java (so you can work it into a build process via ant).

Someone's even made an online version of it.

Answer 3

Try YUICompress which usually works like a charm. Can minify CSS as well.

Answer 4

There's also a .NET port of YUI Compressor which allows you to:-

• intergrate the minification/file combining into Visual Studio post-build events
• intergrate into a TFS Build (including CI)
• if you wish to just use the dll's in your own code (eg. on the fly minification).

because this is a port of the (original) java version YUI Compressor, which a few peeps mention above, it should give you the same results BUT all in the .NET environment -- no need for java.

HTH.