Andy Peatling’s project, CSS Tweak, is a fantastic online tool that can optimize your CSS files. Simply provide CSS Tweak your CSS file, either by pasting (temporarily disabled currently) it or selecting it to upload and configure the options to determine how tweaked you want your file to be, ie to remove comments, whitespace, etcetera. Hit the tweak button and you will quickly be greeted with your new, smaller file in addition to a percentage number of how much smaller it was able to make your file. When I tried it, one of my stylesheets was made 32% smaller with the other at 23%. This is great for cutting down on file sizes and loading times.
CSS Tweak is currently a pre-release, with upcoming versions hoping to tackle Internet Explorer CSS and XHTML markup. Go on and give it a try.
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Very cool little trick :)
Thanks for the tip!
28% shrinkage for me… and i didn’t even have to get wet.
i’m sitting on the fence regarding css tweaking utilities such as css tweak. on one hand they work wonders as far as removing whitespace [cutting down on filesize]. on the other.. well there’s a reason why some people add indentations. i guess everyone has their own way of organizing their code.
what i want to see is a tweaking utility that automatically indents in relation to parent id’s / class’s.
My strategy is to keep two copies of the CSS file. The tweaked one on the server and then the original with the exact same markup, only not tweaked. When I need to update something, I change the original, run it through CSS tweak and then upload it.
Hm.. I haven’t tried CSS Tweak yet, but over past 4-5 months I’m quite satisfied with CSS Compressor and use it religiously.
It does exactly the same as you described (or did I miss something) ?
And yeah, keeping indented and organized CSS file in local while habing the tweaked version on the server is a good strategy. We’re on the same boat.