When to minify?

[dhtml]

Re: When to minify?

Douglas Crockford wrote:

rf wrote:

I highly recommend that you get Steve Sourders's book on performance.

It's probably worthy of adding to the FAQ.

--
comp.lang.javas cript FAQ <URL: http://jibbering.com/faq/ >

[dhtml]

Re: When to minify?

Jorge wrote:

On Nov 15, 7:57 pm, Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn <PointedE...@we b.de>
wrote:

>You don't serve large script files to mobile devices.
>>

>
You don't know what you're talking about: The last iPhone webApp that
I have written (not counting iui.js): 2256 lines of JavaScript, 64592
characters -43286 characters minified (conservative setting) ->
11561 bytes gzipped.
>
Minification alone shrinked it by 20k+.
>

>Anyhow, for 2 KiB that is
>>
>13.0 kbit/s on GSM, (...) etc etc

>
Mobile users don't get that speeds, those are (in theory) maximum
speeds, nothing to do with what you really get.
>

Building into one file reduces the number of HTTP requests and adds one
file into the cache (not 20 or so, which can easily happen when applying
good old SRP).

If the file is minified, it will take less room in the cache. Cache
limits are finite. In mobile devices (like iPhone), cache is generally
not as large as a desktop browser.

Garrett


--
comp.lang.javas cript FAQ <URL: http://jibbering.com/faq/ >

[Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn]

Re: When to minify?

Jorge wrote:

Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn wrote:

>You don't serve large script files to mobile devices.

>
You don't know what you're talking about: The last iPhone webApp that
I have written (not counting iui.js): 2256 lines of JavaScript, 64592
characters -43286 characters minified (conservative setting) ->
11561 bytes gzipped.

I happen to own an iPhone 3G. Its support includes EDGE and UMTS. What was
your problem again?

Minification alone shrinked it by 20k+.

On EDGE (I'm not even talking about UMTS) that makes about 0.860+ s less --
blink of an eye.

That said, you don't even see the contradiction: cutting off 20k+ due to
minimization from what, about 100k+ of code? And you are actually caring
about mobile users? That's ridiculous.

>Anyhow, for 2 KiB that is
>>
>13.0 kbit/s on GSM, (...) etc etc

>
Mobile users don't get that speeds, those are (in theory) maximum
speeds, nothing to do with what you really get.

13.0 kbit/s *is about* the transfer rate of (original) GSM (which is not
very common anymore), channel splitting, syncing, bit error correction, and
time slots already considered. You may be right about the other transfer
rates, however even then the time difference would be negligible.

And you still miss the point.


PointedEars
--
Anyone who slaps a 'this page is best viewed with Browser X' label on
a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the Web,
when you had very little chance of reading a document written on another
computer, another word processor, or another network. -- Tim Berners-Lee

[Jorge]

Re: When to minify?

On Nov 16, 6:46 pm, Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn <PointedE...@we b.de>
wrote:

>
That said, you don't even see the contradiction: cutting off 20k+ due to
minimization from what, about 100k+ of code? And you are actually caring
about mobile users? That's ridiculous.
>

That's ridiculous:

"Cutting 30k by gzipping is allright, but cutting 20k+ by minifying
isn't."

duh!

--
Jorge.

[Jorge]

Re: When to minify?

On Nov 16, 6:46 pm, Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn <PointedE...@we b.de>
wrote:

>
That said, you don't even see the contradiction: cutting off 20k+ due to
minimization from what, about 100k+ of code?  And you are actually caring
about mobile users?  That's ridiculous.
>

This is ridiculous:

"Cutting 30k by gzipping is allright, but cutting 20k by minifying
isn't."

duh!

--
Jorge.

"Silly things such as logic, common sense, rational
thoughts or good manners are not allowed in this
forum."

[Jason S]

Re: When to minify?

As a regular user with a high-speed internet connection I don't care
about minification.

As a peek-under-the-hood user, I don't like minification.

As a frugal owner of a website hosted by a pay-by-usage service
(http://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/) I use gzip to keep my costs down &
am aware of minification -- if my site usage goes up, it is an option
that I will use to reduce costs.

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: When to minify?

Jorge wrote:

>
This is ridiculous:
>
"Cutting 30k by gzipping is allright, but cutting 20k by minifying
isn't."

And how much larger is the file if you just gzip, and don't minify?
Frequent strings of repeated spaces ought to find a pretty high place
in the LZ table.

Frankly, as a user who on occasion has to debug scripts on other
people's pages (typically using Firebug) and fix them (generally with
Greasemonkey-injected scripts of my own), I think "minifying" is
damned obnoxious.

I've never felt the need to read web pages, much less attempt to use
ones with grandiose scripts, on a mobile device. If I did, I'd accept
the limitations of the tools I chose to use. I don't expect my toolbox
saw to cut as fast as my power compound mitre saw.

But if you want to cater to the technophiles, that's your business.

--
Michael Wojcik
Micro Focus
Rhetoric & Writing, Michigan State University

[Jorge]

Re: When to minify?

On Nov 17, 9:32 pm, Michael Wojcik <mwoj...@newsgu y.comwrote:

Jorge wrote:
>

This is ridiculous:

>

"Cutting 30k by gzipping is allright, but cutting 20k by minifying
isn't."

>
And how much larger is the file if you just gzip, and don't minify?
Frequent strings of repeated spaces ought to find a pretty high place
in the LZ table.
>

Yes, Wojcik, that's a good question, because most UAs "Accept-
encoding: gzip" nowadays: these are the numbers:

..js: 64592 chars.
..js: 43286 chars. (minified).
..js.gz: 14229 bytes. (gzipped).
..js.gz: 11561 bytes. (minified + gzipped).

43286/11561 = 3.74
64592/14229 = 4.54

As you guessed, the several Ks of whiteSpace allow gzip() to get a
better compression ratio.

OTOH, the non-minified script that ends up into the browser's memory
still weights (unnecessarily) +20k more than the minified version:
IOW, it both takes longer to transmit and occupies 50% more memory
once received. Is it a "don't care" ? I don't think so. YMMV.

--
Jorge.

[Jorge]

Re: When to minify?

On Nov 17, 9:32 pm, Michael Wojcik <mwoj...@newsgu y.comwrote:

>
I've never felt the need to read web pages, much less attempt to use
ones with grandiose scripts, on a mobile device.

Yeah, but I'm talking about a webApp, not a page with some scripts.
You can't avoid big scripts with webApps, isn't it ?

--
Jorge.

[Gregor Kofler]

Re: When to minify?

Jorge meinte:

OTOH, the non-minified script that ends up into the browser's memory
still weights (unnecessarily) +20k more than the minified version:
IOW, it both takes longer to transmit and occupies 50% more memory
once received. Is it a "don't care" ? I don't think so. YMMV.

Indeed. Since my currently running FF occupies 280MB, I suppose the 20kB
(0.007% of 280MB) are negligible. As you said: YMMV.

Gregor

[Jorge]

Re: When to minify?

On Nov 18, 10:07 am, Gregor Kofler <use...@gregork ofler.atwrote:

Jorge meinte:
>

OTOH, the non-minified script that ends up into the browser's memory
still weights (unnecessarily) +20k more than the minified version:
IOW, it both takes longer to transmit and occupies 50% more memory
once received. Is it a "don't care" ? I don't think so. YMMV.

>
Indeed. Since my currently running FF occupies 280MB, I suppose the 20kB
(0.007% of 280MB) are negligible. As you said: YMMV.
>

Yeah, no need to gzip() either.

--
Jorge.

[Gregor Kofler]

Re: When to minify?

Jorge meinte:

On Nov 18, 10:07 am, Gregor Kofler <use...@gregork ofler.atwrote:

>Jorge meinte:
>>

>>OTOH, the non-minified script that ends up into the browser's memory
>>still weights (unnecessarily) +20k more than the minified version:
>>IOW, it both takes longer to transmit and occupies 50% more memory
>>once received. Is it a "don't care" ? I don't think so. YMMV.

>Indeed. Since my currently running FF occupies 280MB, I suppose the 20kB
>(0.007% of 280MB) are negligible. As you said: YMMV.
>>

>
Yeah, no need to gzip() either.

Nope - since we are talking about *transferring* either 60kB or 14kB.
Once on the client it won't make a difference.

Gregor

[Jorge]

Re: When to minify?

On Nov 18, 4:00 pm, Gregor Kofler <use...@gregork ofler.atwrote:

Jorge meinte:
>

On Nov 18, 10:07 am, Gregor Kofler <use...@gregork ofler.atwrote:

Jorge meinte:

>

>OTOH, the non-minified script that ends up into the browser's memory
>still weights (unnecessarily) +20k more than the minified version:
>IOW, it both takes longer to transmit and occupies 50% more memory
>once received. Is it a "don't care" ? I don't think so. YMMV.
Indeed. Since my currently running FF occupies 280MB, I suppose the 20kB
(0.007% of 280MB) are negligible. As you said: YMMV.

>

Yeah, no need to gzip() either.

>
Nope - since we are talking about *transferring* either 60kB or 14kB.
Once on the client it won't make a difference.
>
Gregor

I give up.

--
Jorge.

[Gregor Kofler]

Re: When to minify?

Jorge meinte:

I give up.

Victory, at last! The heinous empire of minifiers defeated.

[David Mark]

Re: When to minify?

On Nov 14, 11:32 am, Martin Rinehart <MartinRineh... @gmail.comwrote :

How much javascript would you have when you decide that minifying is
called for?

Why would it matter how much?

The answer to "when to minify" is: right before you start testing the
script. As mentioned, if your server supports HTTP compression, then
the "minificati on" is mostly a waste (might help with the odd agent
that declines GZIP.)