What does minify mean

Therefore, anything that makes the HTML readable to developers but is not essential for the compilation that can be modified and eliminated. When files are minified then, comments, extra-spaces are removed and variable names are crunched to minimize the code and reduce the file size. There is only one downside of this process that the minified file is not readable. So, it is crucial to keep both versions of the file.

Designers and developers can work on the human-readable file whereas the other version is used to deploy to the server. To distinguish the files from one another, the original resource contains ". Across the board, the source code minification reduces the size of the file and can speed up how long it takes the browser to download, and execute such code.

This means that users will probably not be able to view any content on a web page unless the browser has created CSSOM DOM but not with CSS information , which only happens when this document After downloading and parsing all the style sheets represented by the document. The minification is important because unnecessarily large CSS files, due to shipping of unminified or unused CSS, help provide users with this unwanted experience.

Code minification and compression are often used interchangeably, perhaps because they both address performance optimizations that reduce size. But they are different, and I want to explain how:. Alters the content of code. This reduces the code file size by removing unwanted spaces, characters and formats, resulting in fewer characters in the code. It can optimize the code by changing the variable securely to use even fewer characters. Doesn't actually change the content of the code - well, unless we consider binary files such as images, which we are not covering in this research.

When the browser is requested, it reduces the file size by compressing the files before serving the browser. This is essentially the same as Manifestation. To 'uglify' a JavaScript file is to minify it using Uglify. Another method is to minimize the code required for each statement. For example, a margin definition might take seven lines in longhand, but only one line in shorthand.

In JavaScript, long variable names can be replaced with shorter ones often a single character. Below is an example of CSS code before and after minification. Note how the comments, spaces, line breaks, and unnecessary semicolons are removed. The code is also converted from longhand CSS to shorthand.

Advanced minification algorithms can reduce file size even further. It may also combine similar CSS definitions into a single statement. A JS minifier may actually rewrite JavaScript functions to be more efficient.

Minifying code often saves only a few kilobytes. However, when improving page load speed, every kilobyte matters. The goal of a good minifier is to reduce file size as much as possible with zero impact on the way the code is parsed or processed. Regardless of what minifier is used, developers typically maintain a non-minified version of the code for future editing.

Minification has become standard practice for page optimization. Register Now. Minification is a major component of front end optimization FEO , a set of tools and techniques that reduce file sizes and the number of associated web page requests. However, performing and managing minification can be cumbersome. Manual minification is a bad practice and becomes virtually impossible where large files are concerned. Keeping them in sync is often burdensome.

A content delivery network CDN provides automated minification, relieving you of the overhead required to minify your own files. You keep your original, uncompressed files on your main server, while the CDN automatically stores minified variants on its caching servers and PoPs—keeping them in sync with source modifications. This is done without requiring any server configuration on your end, while at the same time protecting your organization—large or small—from major threats e.

Minification What is Minification Minification is the process of minimizing code and markup in your web pages and script files. See how Imperva CDN can help you with website performance. Request demo Learn more. Article's content.