Javascript & CSS developers looking to batch minify their files may already use the command line, but others will prefer an OS X inspired drag & drop solution. These YUI Compressor’s will gobble down your web files and spit them out with a smaller byte footprint, though the choice between these two compressors may be difficult because they’re… very similar. Quickly running through the features, we’ll leave you to decide if Delivery or Smaller will be better for your workflow.
Delivery is the least expensive (free), but provides the fewest options when minimizing your files. Dragging in Javascript & CSS files onto its Object Dock icon, a couple badges emerge notifying you of how many files you’re compressing, along with how much space was saved at the end of the operation. Delivery uses two compression algorithms, and decides between the one that will leave you with the smallest files. While you don’t have a choice for output (there are no preferences), Delivery places the compressed files back in their working directory with .min appended to the file names.
More expensive at $15, Smaller offers a GUI and allows you to compress files to a new location if you desire. As you add files to a graphical queue, you initiate the minify process (and you have the option to obfuscate Javascript as well) manually, but you don’t get a nice badge notifying you like Delivery. We like Smaller though as you can acknowledge the minimize process before committing, and has preferences that allow you to chose the resulting suffix.
Conclusion:
We suggest you give them both a try, and I have to thank our web guru Alessandro Vendruscolo for the rundown. Overall we like Delivery because it’s free and takes less actions to use, while Smaller gives you some additional options that removes the terminal barrier for web designers. You can check out Delivery and Smaller at their respective home-pages for more information.
