use Perl

All the major browsers support gzipped content, signalled by the HTTP request header "Accept-Encoding: gzip". Several toolkits support auto-gzipping dynamic content in this case (Catalyst::Plugin::Compress::Gzip, Apache::Compress and my own CGI::Compress::Gzip )

But what about static content (specifically .js and .css files)? Compression of static content doesn't matter as much because it will be cached after the first hit, but that first hit is also a first impression. Gzip can dramatically reduce the download size of the first hit, especially for sites with modern dynamic content (like scriptaculous and its ilk).

In my current Catalyst project, I added a step to gzip all of my .js and .css files as part of the build process, then I did somthing like this in my header template:

[% SET gz = !c.config.devsite && c.req.header('Accept-Encoding').search('gzip') ? '.gz' : '' %]
  <link rel="stylesheet" href="[% c.uri_for( "/css/site.css${gz}" ) %]" type="text/css" />
  <script type="text/javascript" src="[% c.uri_for( "/js/prototype.js${gz}" ) %]"></script>

I deliberately turn it off on the dev site because I change those files without rebuilding the whole app.

On a related note, can someone recommend a JS squisher that has a nicer API than JavaScript::Minifier?