=================== WebResourceBundler gem README ============================ Content: 1. Purpose 2. Functional description 3. Installation 4. Usage 5. Recommendations =================== 1. Purpose =============================================== The main purpose of WebResourceBundler gem is to minimize request & response round-trips count. This could be done by bundling particular resource (css or js) in one file. Encoding images in base64 and putting then in css directly. =================== 2. Functional description ================================ WebResourceBundler parse your head html block, finding all css and js resource files. It can bundle resource of particular type in one single file. Base64 filter encodes images in base64 putting them in css directly. Separate files for IE and other browsers created. Conditional comments (like <% end %> Notice: For Rails < 3 you should use <% web_resource_bundler_process do %> And For Rails >= 3 use <%= web_resource_bundler_process do %> And as result you'll have !!! Don't forget to clean your cache directory after deploy to clean old bundles To disable bundling and see raw results add no_bundler param mysite.com/?no_bundler=1 ================= 5. Recommendations =================================== 1. Be mindful while organazing and linking your resource files WebResourceBundler combines all resource file in one. This resulted file could be huge. a. Don't link all resources in layouts! Be sure to link resources (css\js) only for pages that using them, in other case your users will be forced to download huge css\js files with unused content. b. One css for one page. Try to slice you css files - separate file for each particular page. c. Separate bundle block for crucial resources To make crucial resources (basic styles\scripts for user can see basic page layout ASAP) load first - just bundle them in separate web_resource_bundler_process block and put this block at the top of your head block. 2. Don't set max_image_size to big values. The main reason of using Base64 filter is to avoid unnecessary server requests and minimize load time, but when encoded image is very big, traffic overhead time (encoded image base64 code is bigger for apprx. 30% than source image size) could be bigger than request time. In this case your site could be even slower than without a WebResourceBundler. Recommended max_image_size value is 1..20kbytes 3. Be careful with third party scripts. Some third party javascript libs can load another script file on the fly, relative path for this file computed on the client side. But your scripts are bundled and their relative path changed (cache folder), that's why such script won't be able to compute loaded file path correctly. You should avoid bundling such tricky javascripts. 4. Unexistent resources handling a. Be sure to link in html only existent resource files, otherwise bundler won't work. b. If you have unexistent images in css, bundler will work but you've got info messages in log.