Eight Free CSS and JavaScript Compression Tools

Need to squeeze every ounce of performance out of an ecommerce site or application? Consider compression.

While I would never recommend compression during the development process or even for smaller sites, CSS and JavaScript compression can give you an edge when you're working on a larger ecommerce site that needs better performance. To put this in perspective, compressing your CSS or JavaScript can often reduce file size by 50 percent or more, which in turn improves load times and cuts down on how much bandwidth your site requires. CSS and JavaScript compressors can also combine files—CSS with CSS and JavaScript with JavaScript—to save even more bits and bytes.

On an image-heavy or video-heavy ecommerce site, CSS and JavaScript compression may not account for much performance improvement, but again, if every millisecond counts, it is worth a try.

A CSS or JavaScript compressor—sometimes called a packer—pulls all of the comments, unneeded returns, and white space out of your code, leaving a much leaner file. Generally, compressing the file does not affect CSS, but JavaScript compression can sometimes break functions. So if you compress, test.

Finally, JavaScript compression is different from JavaScript minification, which actually changes some JavaScript characters or expressions and eliminates some variables to save even more space.

Now that I've provided my brief description of and disclaimer for CSS and JavaScript compression (and minification), let me introduce you to eight compressors you can use for your projects.