Minify your Javascript bloat with Scriptalizer

Aaron Lynch, one of the brains behind InstantSpot.com has just launched a new ColdFusion tag, as well as a website that allows you to compress multiple Javascript files into a single, minified file.

From Aaron's site:

"We all know JQuery is awesome right? That should be common knowledge by now. But, if you have ever created an app that makes use of several of the fantastic plugins available for JQuery, then you are going to end up with multiple tags for JQuery alone...not to mention any of your own external javascript files.

So, why is this a problem?

First of all, there is a little bit of bloat going on in this scenario. One could easily end up with over 200Kb of javascript in an assortment of these files. The other thing to consider is that the browser can only make so many concurrent connections to the web server (each external javascript file is one connection by the way) so add all of these files, a bunch of images, a couple .css files and we are making that user wait longer than really necessary.

Lets reduce the number of browser - to - server connections."

The ColdFusion code can be found on his site or you can upload a series of JS files to Scriptalizer.com which will compile and reduce the files for you.