Are you doing JavaScript development and your JavaScript code has grown and grown? Have you ever looked at the available JavaScript compressors/packers?
On the weekend I have found a really nice one, it’s available as online version at http://dean.edwards.name/packer/ or can also be downloaded as .NET stand alone and it’s FREE!!!
I did a test and used it to compress the JavaScript files of my Oracle APEX – ApexLib development framework and the result is really astonishing!
| All my JavaScript libraries together (with comments, …) | 95.465 bytes |
| All my JavaScript libraries together where I manually removed all comments | 44.120 bytes |
| Compressed with the above tool | 19.161 bytes |
Note: Don’t forget to read the help for the tool, because your scripts have to comply to some restrictions.
So there is no excuse anymore not to comment your JavaScript code or to use 1 or 2 digit variable/method names, just to save a few bytes! Always remember that you have to maintain that code in a few months…
February 5th, 2007 at 08:33
You should take a look at the Dojo Compressor as well
http://dojotoolkit.org/docs/compressor_system.html
It leaves slightly more readable code which is nice if you still want people to be able to dig through your code
February 5th, 2007 at 08:56
Carl,
the dojo Compressor looks also interesting!
But i’m not sure if it really produces a more readable code, because debugging a code which has variables named _1, _2, … and no formating, no comments will be quite hard.
That’s why I think the best solution for both compressors is to include a link to the uncompressed version of the JavaScript library at the top of the file.
The linked JavaScript library can be used in case of debugging or digging and contains all the formating, comments, …
Patrick