Rails Javascript and CSS Compression

To speed up site loading, there are two great plugins for “compressing” your stylesheets and javascript.

The first is bundle-fu. This plugin does not actually compress the files, but rather combines all of the individual documents into one before shipping it out to the client browser.

$ script/plugin install git://github.com/timcharper/bundle-fu.git

And then you simply wrap your sheet and script calls in the bundle method:

  <% bundle do %>
    ...
    <%= javascript_include_tag "prototype" %>
    <%= stylesheet_link_tag "basic.css" %>
    <%= calendar_date_select_includes "red" %>
    
    ...
  <% end %>

The Second plugin, which actually does compress all of your files, is sbecker’s asset_packager. This one is a lot more involved, so check out the github site for more information.