Below are listed some great tools that can help you achieve better loading speed of your website and some additional resources to read more about this subject. So lets get to work.
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1. Site Load Test
This one mainly works like a validator, but tells you more about each error you have. Although it has quite a few errors, 1stwebdesigner.com got a general loading time of 1.88 seconds, which is very good according to the standards, which say that a page should load within a maximum of four seconds.
Site Load Test will not do wonders for you, but will help you get rid of those tiny little errors you didn’t think about. It also helps you find errors regarding uploaded files, websites’ size and total objects to load, not only CSS and JavaScript mistakes you’ve made while coding. Note that this is not an application that will automatically remove the errors – you will have to do it yourself.
2. Packer
If you are a JavaScript developer or you want to use a JavaScript code in your webpage, Packer is what you need. It will not create the code for you, but it will compress it. This tools works very fast and very well. You only need to copy your original code into the top field and then click on “Pack”. Within a few seconds you will get the new code (which basically does the same as the original one), but in a different state. The compressed code will not generate errors and, as you all know, less code is less size and therefore faster loading time.
3. SquishIt
SquishIt is a GitHub trademark and helps you a lot as well. When you have both CSS and JavaScript in your website (which is pretty much most of the time you code), this tool will “bundle” both of them into one file, making the number of files that need to load smaller. Although this tool might be a bit difficult to use due to the poor interface, once you play with it once or twice you will see it actually can be useful.
SquishIt can help with much more thanks to the Google Group and the discussion forum it features. You can talk about way more than CSS and JavaScript there, ask for advice and opinions and then code properly.
4. Minify
This one is a PHP5 application that helps you with your CSS and JavaScript. What is does is that it combines several CSS and JavaScript files removing white space and comments and exports them with gzip encoding and optimal client-side cache headers.
Basically, if you have 5 JavaScript files, they will all become one after you use Minify. The app is easy to use, eliminates HTTP requests and reduces CSS/JavaScript bandwidth by 70%.
The app is integrated in other projects as well. If you run WordPress, there are two plugins which enjoy the same features: WP Minify and W3 Total Cache.
5. JSMin
JavaScript Minifier works pretty much as Minify, only it does not combine multiple files together. The only thing it does is that it removes the white space and comments from a JavaScript page. The official website of the tool says the app helps reduce the file size by half and encourages a more expressive programming style. JavaScript Minifier does not modify anything else in your code and it will not ruin it, so that the script will run properly.
6. Google Closure Compiler
Google’s tool is another one that basically cleans your code to allow faster loading time. This tool, however, does efficiently correct and remove a wide range of common coding errors in JavaScript.
The Compiler includes a huge JavaScript library, tested on several browsers and computers, a style checker and fixer and a JS optimizer. Google’s tool is very powerful and works perfectly, tidying up each of your JavaScript pages until nothing else can be done to it.
7. YUI Compressor
Although Yahoo! has fallen behind lately, their developer network still does a bit of a good work. YUI Compressor is one of their products which, as the name says, compresses your files fast and safe. YUI works both with CSS and JavaScript and proclaims itself as being better than competitors such as Packer or JSMin (presented above). The goal of the application is to preserve the qualities of the code and to only modify what is not working properly.
With Yahoo’s tool we end the list of CSS/JavaScript compressors which help your page load faster. Most of them are very easy to use and you won’t even have to spend much time optimizing your page, but it is a good idea to do it before uploading the final version of the site. Don’t forget that loading time is very important for both you and the visitors and not being able to hold a high standard might not help you too much. Therefore you should try out each of these tools and see which one of them works better for you.
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