[Koha-devel] combining and minification of javascript and css

[Dobrica Pavlinusic]

I would like to address this one as part of performance work.

We have existing bug for this, but I'm sending also this to list to get
wider feedback.

http://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=1918

I found https://github.com/jshirley/Plack-Middleware-ComboLoader which
got me pushed in right direction, but in the end I decided to implement
Koha::Template::Plugin::Combine because it turned out that it's easier
if we can use combining and minification together.

Changes are available at:

https://github.com/dpavlin/Koha/compare/dpavlin:plack...dpavlin:bug_1918-combine

Minification alone doesn't buy us much:

OPAC search:
minify js 334974 -> 311553 93.01%
minify css 148277 -> 133128 89.78%

intranet search:
minify js 382102 -> 362172 94.78%
minify css 134754 -> 123771 91.85%

But combining JS and CSS files together saves us round-trips to server:

OPAC 32 -> 20 requests
intranet 27 -> 13 requests

I would love to hear your feedback on this.

-- 
Dobrica Pavlinusic               2share!2flame            dpavlin at rot13.org
Unix addict. Internet consultant.             http://www.rot13.org/~dpavlin