On 07/09/10 17:44, Roan Kattouw wrote:
> 2010/9/7 Dmitriy Sintsov <ques...@rambler.ru>:
>> Do browsers support streamed and combined (archive-like) gz-encoded
>> content? Then probably minifying will not be neccessary.
> Minification makes a shocking difference: remember that it's not just
> whitespace being stripped, it's comments as well. For example, in
> /trunk/extensions/UsabilityInitiative/js we have:
>
> plugins.combined.js: 259281 bytes
> plugins.combined.min.js: 142565 bytes
> plugins.combined.js.gz: 65569 bytes
> plugins.combined.min.js.gz: 32740 bytes
>
> So not only is the minified JS roughly half the size in both the
> compressed and the uncompressed cases, it actually /compresses better/
> (3.95x vs. 4.35x).
Note that the advantage of minification is somewhat inflated due to
the nature of the source. There seems to be a "because we can" element
to it: because the developers are so impressed by the concept of
minification, they write excessively verbose and excessively many
comments. For example:
// create the span wrapper for the matched text
var spannode = document.createElement( 'span' );
spannode.className = 'highlight';
// shave off the characters preceding the matched text
var middlebit = node.splitText( pos );
// shave off any unmatched text off the end
middlebit.splitText( pat.length );
// clone for appending to our span
var middleclone = middlebit.cloneNode( true );
// append the matched text node to the span
spannode.appendChild( middleclone );
// replace the matched node, with our span-wrapped clone of the
matched node
middlebit.parentNode.replaceChild( spannode, middlebit );
Or a doc comment:
/**
* This plugin provides a generic way to add suggestions to a text box.
*
* Usage:
*
* Set options:
* $('#textbox').suggestions( { option1: value1, option2: value2 }
);
* $('#textbox').suggestions( option, value );
* Get option:
* value = $('#textbox').suggestions( option );
* Initialize:
* $('#textbox').suggestions();
*
* Options:
*
* fetch(query): Callback that should fetch suggestions and set the
suggestions property. Executed in the context of the
* textbox
* Type: Function
* cancel: Callback function to call when any pending asynchronous
suggestions fetches should be canceled.
* Executed in the context of the textbox
* Type: Function
* special: Set of callbacks for rendering and selecting
* Type: Object of Functions 'render' and 'select'
* result: Set of callbacks for rendering and selecting
* Type: Object of Functions 'render' and 'select'
* $region: jQuery selection of element to place the suggestions below
and match width of
* Type: jQuery Object, Default: $(this)
* suggestions: Suggestions to display
* Type: Array of strings
* maxRows: Maximum number of suggestions to display at one time
* Type: Number, Range: 1 - 100, Default: 7
* delay: Number of ms to wait for the user to stop typing
* Type: Number, Range: 0 - 1200, Default: 120
* submitOnClick: Whether to submit the form containing the textbox
when a suggestion is clicked
* Type: Boolean, Default: false
* maxExpandFactor: Maximum suggestions box width relative to the
textbox width. If set to e.g. 2, the suggestions box
* will never be grown beyond 2 times the width of the textbox.
* Type: Number, Range: 1 - infinity, Default: 3
* positionFromLeft: Whether to position the suggestion box with the
left attribute or the right
* Type: Boolean, Default: true
* highlightInput: Whether to hightlight matched portions of the input
or not
* Type: Boolean, Default: false
*/
I think it's ironic that this style arises in JavaScript, given that
it's a high-level language and relatively easy to understand, and that
you could make a technical case in favour of terseness. C has an
equally effective minification technique known as compilation, and its
practitioners tend to be terse to a fault. For instance, many Linux
kernel modules have no comments at all, except for the license header.
-- Tim Starling
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