With this release, I’ve updated the Packer compressor from 3.1 alpha 3 to 3.1 final. The Packer compressor with spidermonkey continues to be some 20x times faster than the rhino based version, making the compressorrater all that more easy to use as a your go to javascript compressor.
Posted by: Arthur Blake | 2009-08-09
CompressorRater 1.0.9 updates
Posted in CompressorRater, JavaScript
Arthur Blake's Blog 
The table column labelled “Run Time” is, I assume, the time taken to *compress* the JavaScript. It would be very useful to know browser *decompression* time. It’s important to be aware of the impact of eval (de)compressors as they may well slow rather than increase page load speed (especially on slow or handheld hardware).
By: anonymous on 2009-08-13
at 7:10 pm
Yeah, that would be nice. I am however thinking about disabling base64 compression by default (the ONLY runtime decompression in the current mix) as I don’t think runtime decompression is really very valuable these days.
With gzip (technically gzip is a runtime decompressor too, but it runs in native code in the browser and it’s so fast that it doesn’t count) and a decent minification+shrinker the compressed results are usually only a few hundred bytes different… IMO not worth the extra overhead of a run time decompressor.
The only good reason I can think of using a runtime decompressor is for obfuscation, but it’s so easy to get around that, it’s not even funny… and minification+shrinking obfuscates pretty well against casual observers anyway.
By: Arthur Blake on 2009-08-13
at 7:23 pm
I have make another javascript compressor called JSXS :
http://www.xorax.info/labs/jsxs/
It’s a minimifier like YUI Compressor with some other features.
Just try it and give me your feedback 🙂
By: Xorax on 2009-08-28
at 4:17 pm
Is Closure ever going to be added to the list of compressors?
By: antimatter15 on 2009-11-08
at 8:19 pm
Hi, thanx for your usefull tool. I would like to ask, if Google Closure Compiler will be added soon?
By: daniel steigerwald on 2009-11-09
at 8:23 am
Google Closure looks pretty cool. Maybe I’ll add it when I get some time.
By: Arthur Blake on 2009-11-09
at 8:57 pm
I would be great to compare Closure wit YUI, especially with gzip. Even jQuery started to build minified version using Closure.
By: Milan on 2010-01-17
at 6:20 am
Me too +1 for adding Google Closure. 🙂
By: Janis on 2010-03-15
at 6:03 pm
+1 on adding Google Closure Compiler to the mix.
By: Kyle Simpson on 2010-02-17
at 9:56 am
I recommend this tool to everyone but with an enormous disclaimer…. which is that it doesnt come with Closure Compiler.
It needs to.
Also Dean Edwards himself would recommend against using the base62 encode with packer, so I think that option should be disabled.
By: Paul Irish on 2010-04-12
at 3:55 pm
Thanks. I agree about base62 (as I mentioned earlier in this thread and elsewhere) I may remove that option from the defaults.
As for Google closure, I plan to add that when I can. This project is something I work on in my spare time… and there isn’t much of that!
By: Arthur Blake on 2010-04-12
at 7:18 pm
Hey Arthur
Thanks so much for CompressorRater. What an excellent tool! You should put up a Donate button so that people can contribute to your great work.
Best Regards
Gavin
By: Gavin on 2010-11-17
at 3:39 am
Hey Arthur!
Nice, your comparison tool is #1 on Google when I search “JavaScript compressor”. 🙂 Do you still maintain it?
I wrote a JavaScript compressor which beats YUI Compressor and it’s close to Google Closure (sometimes better) in terms of output code size. And it’s faster than both (by far). 🙂 It would be neat if you could include it as an option in your comparison tool. JQuery is planning to switch to it starting next version.
Here’s the tool: http://github.com/mishoo/UglifyJS (it’s for NodeJS) and here you can try it online: http://marijnhaverbeke.nl/uglifyjs
Cheers,
-Mihai
By: Mihai Bazon on 2011-01-03
at 12:40 pm
I do plan to update the compressorrater at some point- I’ve already started to add Google Closure to the mix, but I’ve just been too busy with other projects to work on it lately. I’ve followed your UglifyJS project on github– it looks like a nice compressor. I may add it later as well.
By: Arthur Blake on 2011-01-03
at 1:17 pm
+1 for UglifyJS
I’ve also been following the UglifyJS project, and I’ve had a great experience using it 🙂
Almost always I get better compression rates than other minifiers.
And on one occasion Closure was breaking my code (when using advanced optimizations), while UglifyJS worked perfectly and even produced a smaller result 🙂 how about that ? 🙂
Keep up the good work, both of you
By: Dan Manastireanu on 2011-03-16
at 5:03 am
Thanks for the comment. I used to spend a lot of time to try and obtain compression nirvana and eke out those last few bytes of compression, but more lately I’ve taken a more practical approach.
JSMin tends to be by far the fastest compressor, so it can often be used on demand in realtime while serving pages, and once you add gzip it’s almost always very close in compression levels to the more sophisticated but slower compressors.
I still would like to add closure and UglifyJS to the mix whenever I can get my head above the water on current projects.
By: Arthur Blake on 2011-03-16
at 9:43 am
It would be extremely nice to Google Closure Compiler and UglifyJS added to the list of compressors here.
By: James Greene on 2011-03-23
at 10:10 am