Method One
This method involves adding a small PHP script to your CSS document and replacing its
.css
extension with a
.php
extension.
Place the following PHP script into the top of the CSS document that you wish to compress. Then change the
.css
extension to
.php
, to arrive at something similar to:
compressed-css.php
. Remember to use the new name when referencing the file.
< ?php
ob_start ("ob_gzhandler");
header ("content-type: text/css; charset: UTF-8");
header ("cache-control: must-revalidate");
$offset = 60 * 60;
$expire = "expires: " . gmdate ("D, d M Y H:i:s", time() + $offset) . " GMT";
header ($expire);
?>
The same PHP script commented with functional explanations:
< ?php
// initialize ob_gzhandler function to send and compress data
ob_start ("ob_gzhandler");
// send the requisite header information and character set
header ("content-type: text/css; charset: UTF-8");
// check cached credentials and reprocess accordingly
header ("cache-control: must-revalidate");
// set variable for duration of cached content
$offset = 60 * 60;
// set variable specifying format of expiration header
$expire = "expires: " . gmdate ("D, d M Y H:i:s", time() + $offset) . " GMT";
// send cache expiration header to the client broswer
header ($expire);
?>
Functional Summary: The previous PHP function will first check to see if the browser requesting the file will accept “gzip-deflate” encoding. If no such support is detected, the requested file is sent without compression. Next, the function sends a header for the content type and character set (in this case, “text/css” and “UTF-8”). Then, a “must-revalidate” “cache-control” header requires revalidation against currently specified variables. Finally, an “expires” header specifies the time duration for which the cached content should persist (one hour in this case).
Method Two
Overview: This method involves placing the PHP script in a separate
.php
file and adding a set of rules to an .
htaccess
file.
A more discrete, unobtrusive method for compressing CSS involves two steps. First, save the script provided in the first method (above) as a seperate
gzip-css.php
file and place it in a CSS-exclusive directory. Then, add the following ruleset to an .
htaccess
file located in the same CSS-exclusive directory (i.e., the CSS directory should contain only CSS files):
# css compression htaccess ruleset AddHandler application/x-httpd-php .css php_value auto_prepend_file gzip-css.php php_flag zlib.output_compression On
The same htaccess ruleset commented with functional explanations:
# css compression htaccess ruleset # process all CSS files in current directory as PHP AddHandler application/x-httpd-php .css # prepend the PHP script to all PHP files in the current directory php_value auto_prepend_file gzip-css.php # compress all parsed PHP pages from current directory # this rule is redundantly present as the first line of the PHP script php_flag zlib.output_compression On
Functional Summary: The .
htaccess
rules above first instruct Apache to parse all CSS files in the current directory as PHP. After this, Apache is instructed to insert the contents of the “
gzip-css.php
” file into the beginning of each PHP (i.e., CSS) file parsed from the current directory. And finally, Apache is instructed to compress automatically every parsed document in the current directory.
Confirmed Browsers
- Internet Explorer 5 and up: works great
- Netscape Navigator 6 and up: works fine
- Mozilla/Firefox: all versions seem to work
- Opera: does not cache compressed CSS
References
