{"id":58,"date":"2008-03-28T12:46:00","date_gmt":"2008-03-28T12:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mohanjith.net\/wordpress\/?p=58"},"modified":"2008-03-28T12:46:00","modified_gmt":"2008-03-28T12:46:00","slug":"recipe-for-compressed-scriptaculous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mohanjith.net\/blog\/2008\/03\/recipe-for-compressed-scriptaculous.html","title":{"rendered":"Recipe for compressed script.aculo.us"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was searching for a compressed version of script.aculo.us<\/a> javascript library in one file. The search turned out almost fruitless; I found outdated script.aculo.us versions compressed. It was obvious to me that I was on my own. I also wanted to post the method to do it instead of the result.<\/p>\n

YUI compressor<\/a> was the best tool I could use to compress any javascript. YUI combined with gzip compression for compatible browsers would produce the smallest on the wire javascript files (See http:\/\/www.julienlecomte.net\/blog\/2007\/08\/13\/).<\/p>\n

First attempt to put all the script.aculo.us files into one file failed with mismatched dependencies. I had to find out the correct order to concat the files. As I found out the order should be scriptaculous.js, builder.js, effects.js, controls.js, dragdrop.js, slider.js, sound.js (I have specifically left out unittest.js). If you want you can throw in Prototype<\/a> into the mix at the begining as it is required by script.aculo.us (I did that).<\/p>\n

Run the following command in a shell prompt from the script.aculo.us root. to concat prototype and script.aculo.us.<\/p>\n

 $ cat lib\/prototype.js src\/scriptaculous.js src\/builder.js src\/effects.js src\/controls.js src\/dragdrop.js src\/slider.js src\/sound.js > scriptaculous.bundle.js<\/pre>\n
 You need to download YUI compressor, run the following command. <\/p>\n
 $ java -jar \/path\/to\/yui\/compressor\/build\/yuicompressor.jar scriptaculous.bundle.js -o scriptaculous.bundle.min.js<\/pre>\n
In my case I use YUI compressor version 2.3.5 and script.aculo.us 1.8.1, and the file sizes were 244KB scriptaculous.bundle.js and 146KB scriptaculous.bundle.min.js. That’s a 40% compression.<\/p>\n
You need to configure your web server to serve javascript files gzipped for user agents that are accepting gzipped content. You have to do your own reasearch for that :). After gzip compression was turned on for javascript files the size of scriptaculous.bundle.min.js on the wire is 41K, that’s a 83% compression, wow that’s alot of saving on bandwidth and loading time.<\/p>\n
You can download the compressed and bundled script.aculo.us scriptaculous.bundle.min.js<\/a>. Hope someone will finds it useful.<\/p>\n