CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptcssrestminify
ctford
ctford

Reputation: 7297

Supplying non-minified CSS/javascript on demand

Minfying your stylesheets and script files improves your site's performance.

However, sometimes you might want to make the non-minified versions of the files available - perhaps to comply with the GPL or to implement the optional code-on-demand REST constraint.

Is there a standardised way of doing this? The only way I can think of is to use a naming convention:

http://example.com/css/styles.min.css - minified version

http://example.com/css/styles.css - non-minified version

The trouble with this approach is that it relies on an out-of-band convention. Is there any more rigorous way of implementing non-minified code-on-demand?

Upvotes: 4

Views: 596

Answers (2)

system PAUSE
system PAUSE

Reputation: 38500

Suggestion: Use Hypermedia. Benefit: Your choice of URIs doesn't matter as much.

If providing sources in a visible fashion to your end-user, in the course of their normal use of your web application:

<a target="_blank" href="http://www.example.com/css/styles.css"
    rel="sourcecode" title="The non-minified CSS source.">
    Click here for CSS source code. </a>

<a target="_blank" href="http://www.example.com/scripts/buttons.js"
    rel="sourcecode" title="The non-minified JavaScript source.">
    Click here for JavaScript source code. </a>

If providing sources to developer users, outside course of their normal use of the web application, it might make sense to reference them in a non-visible section of the source:

<link rel="sourcecode" type="text/css"
    href="http://www.example.com/css/styles.css"
    title="The non-minified CSS source." />

<link rel="sourcecode" type="text/javascript"
    href="http://www.example.com/scripts/buttons.js"
    title="The non-minified JavaScript source." />

These links will only be available to developers who view the source of the HTML, or folks who have really tricked-out user-agents.

Along the same lines, you could put the non-minified CSS (but not JS) source as an alternate stylesheet.

Note: rel="sourcecode" isn't a standard (I just made it up), but I'm pretty sure it doesn't violate spec; and along with the title it helps to communicate the purpose of the link.

Upvotes: 2

David Henderson
David Henderson

Reputation: 1175

You could have some form of handler (e.g. a .NET handler) for .css files that serves up the minified version by default, but if a certain parameter was found in the querystring (e.g. debug=true) then serve up the non-minified version.

That way you can always reference the .css version, and if there is a minified version available, that can be used in preference.

Upvotes: 4

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