Minification (also minimisation or minimization), in computer
programming languages and especially JavaScript, is the process
of removing all unnecessary characters from source code without
changing its functionality. These unnecessary characters usually
include white space characters, new line characters, comments,
and sometimes block delimiters, which are used to add readability
to the code but are not required for it to execute
Minified source code is especially useful for interpreted
languages deployed and transmitted on the Internet (such as
JavaScript), because it reduces the amount of data that needs to
be transferred. Minified source code may also be used as a kind
of obfuscation, though the term obfuscation may be distinguished
as a form of false cryptography while a minified code instance
may be reversed using a pretty-printer. In programmer culture,
aiming at extremely minified source code is the purpose of
recreational code golf competitions.
Minification can be distinguished from the more general
concept of data compression in that the minified source can be
interpreted immediately without the need for an uncompression
step: the same interpreter can work with both the original as
well as with the minified source.
Combining all JavaScript files or CSS files for a single
website into a single file can also help optimize your website.
This reduces the number of HTTP requests. It also makes
minification and gzip compression more effective.