thoughts on CSS Minifier

mbridge87

Hello all,

I'm designing my blog on Wordpress at the minute and was recommended CSS minifier. I wondered if it would be a good idea to run my Smugmug sites CSS through this service? To be honest the site is fast at the moment, except for when I occasionally do something wrong, so I do feel as though maybe I should operate a "if it ain't broken don't fix it" policy.

Opinions would be very welcome.

This is a link to what I am talking about:

http://cssminifier.com/

Cheers

mbridge87

Oh and if it's useful my site is www.maxbridge.co.uk

If anyone's interested the blog is obviously under construction but you can find it here www.blog.maxbridge.co.uk

denisegoldberg

mbridge87 wrote: »

I'm designing my blog on Wordpress at the minute and was recommended CSS minifier. I wondered if it would be a good idea to run my Smugmug sites CSS through this service?

I was curious to see what it would do so I pasted in the CSS from my theme. What a mess it created!

My CSS includes comments to remind me why I am using it. It is spaced to be readable at a glance. When I ran it through the service you referenced all comments were stripped and the CSS was compressed so it is no longer easily readable. From what I saw I wouldn't use this tool for anything.

If you choose to use it for your smug site or your blog keep in mind that it will create something that is difficult to maintain.

--- Denise

mbridge87

Hey Denise,

Yeah I know! For some reason on Wordpress it wasn't so bad, not sure why that is.

I did a quick google search and found this though:

http://www.minifycss.com/css-compressor/

It does the same thing but there are lots more controls. Annoying thing is that for any significant saving you have to remove all of those comments; I use them too. I think for me it's probably best leaving it how it is.

Cheers for commenting though.

Max

Hikin' Mike

I use it on my WordPress site, but I have two versions...one for development (style.css) and one for minified (style.min.css). Minfied code really isn't for "looking at" by people.

I have yet to minify my Smugmug CSS though.

Hikin' Mike

I went ahead and minified my SM site with no issues. I've always had a copy of my CSS in my computer, so minifying it after the changes was no big deal.

Does it make a difference speed-wise? I doubt it.

mbridge87

Cheers for your input Mike.

I think given the size of my sites (small) that I won't see too much of a benefit. Hence out of sheer paranoia I will leave it alone. Just seemed like an interesting idea.