Code Minification is the process of streamlining source code in order to remove the white space, making it able to be parsed faster by browsers & bots.

This is a page load speed optimization tactic, as it can greatly reduce the time taken to load larger CSS or JavaScript files, without sacrificing performance or appearance.

Before minifying code, test it in a local sandbox in order to make sure that no issues are caused by making the changes to existing code, and do not test it on your live website.

How Does Code Minification Work?

When writing webpage code, there are whitespaces between lines of code.

Browsers try to load the code & must parse through the entire file to begin loading the page, which includes going through all of the whitespace in HTML, JavaScript, CSS files & more.

When code is minified, the lines are condensed to be inline, while maintaining the characters & context of the original code.

As you can see, a browser or bot parsing the second image can process everything much faster as it is all contained in one line vs. having to skip down 1,000’s of lines to load.

Minifying JavaScript & CSS files is one of the most common page load speed improvements that can be seen across your site, as it impacts many of the template files that are loaded on every page.