Reducing file size without compromising functionality is important for forward-thinking web developers. Many modern CSS-driven websites use huge external CSS files of anything up to about 20-25kb.

By using CSS shorthand the overall file size can be reduced, increasing the speed of page loads and decreasing bandwidth usage. Another method is to use a compression utility to remove white-space, similar to JavaScript compression. A good compression utility is available at CleanCSS which has a variety of options to choose. CleanCSS can arrange your code to reduce character usage, thus decreasing the file size. As with any type of compression it is advisable to keep a backup copy of your stylesheet just in case you aren’t happy with the results. (more…)

I previously wrote an article on using mod_deflate to compress elements of your web page on the fly when based on an Apache server. However, there are additional ways to reduce the size of your web pages, such as using CSS shorthand tricks (article coming soon) and if you use Javascript this too can be compressed in several ways. In this article I will look at some of the best ways to reduce the size of your Javascript files.

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