What Is Minification?

Shikar Rohol

· 18 Dec 2021

What Is Minification?

The process of reducing file size such as HTML files, cascading style sheets or Javascript is called minification. It is done by deleting unwanted browsers to use files. The main purpose is to make the source code of the page smaller.

White spaces are another such thing that can be removed from a site code to make it smaller. Some webmasters can add blank lines and spaces to their code for easy reading. These white spaces mean nothing to search engines and web browsers. Therefore, these lines are ignored by search engines. These white lines and blank spaces increase file size and extracting them from site source code can make file size much smaller.

How is it different from oppression?

At the conceptual level, the reduction may be similar to a file congestion. Both of these aims to reduce file size. However, these two are not the same thing. The big difference is that compressed files need to be compressed first before opening them. However, when source code is reduced, there may be no need to delete files.

What things can be processed?

Minification works best in languages like JavaScript. Apart from this, it can also be used to reduce the size of HTML files, Cascading Style Spreadsheets, etc.

Tools

· JavaScript codecs like JSMin and Packer. These tools retain conditional comment when minimizing JavaScript source code.

· Closure Compiler which is a tool released by Google. This tool can remove dead code, create aggressive keywords and add inlining.

· Microsoft Ajax Minifier, Yahoo! YUI Compressor and Pretty Diff which helps to reduce the source code of CSS files

· MinifyPS which is a PowerShell text that reduces the size of PowerShell scripts and JavaScript files.

Benefits

Reduce file transfers

The main purpose of file transfers is to reduce file size. File sizes can be greatly reduced depending on the size of the original file.

Reduce page loading time

Since large files take a lot of time to load, minimizing can help reduce page load time significantly. As a result, the bandwidth used to transfer files will also be reduced.

Improves user experience

No one likes to wait too long for a page to load. Reducing page load leads to more in-depth user information.

Improved organic search functionality

Search engines select websites that load faster and promote user-friendly sites. Since minification helps you reduce your page load time and improve user experience, your site will be popular with search engines.

Minimum server space required

If your website is large, minimizing code will mean that you need less server space to host your site.