ThickBox (like lightbox)* Compressed .JS

[taha116]

http://jquery.com/demo/thickbox/

So i am using thickbox because i feel its better suited for me, I want to know what are the benifits of using the compressed versions of thickbox.js and jquery.js ?

What are the potential downsides?

I had a look around and didnt really notice anything about them, what i want to know is weather the compressed files speed up download time, or reduce resource usage etc.

Note* I manually prepared all the files and am not using any plugin for a software like wordpress to get this all to work. I just dreamweaver stuff when editing .html , .js and somtimes php files.
Thanks

[sourfacedcyclop]

I think the compressed versions are smaller for one. The code itself is compressed on only a couple lines, making the file smaller. The downside would be that it would be harder to edit.

[taha116]

Oh, well if thats the only downside then im swiching to it straight away but ill wait for a post or 2 more from ppl to see if there are any other potential downsides they think would occur.

[nterror]

Compression does help make downloading faster. No real downside here as things like comments and white space are removed, and sometimes variables are renamed to something shorter.

It does make changes harder, so you should always keep a backup of the uncompressed file.

Now this compressed JS uses Packer 3.0 with the Base64 encode setting. While having the highest compression, this is like obfuscating, which uses more resources. I would use another compressor on the uncompressed JS.

[xav0989]

For development purpose, you should always use uncompressed version. However, for production uses, take the compressed version as it loads faster on the website.

[taha116]

K thanks for the information guys, i switched to the compressed code for my site and if i ever need to look at the code before compression i can view it on the same site so its ok.

[taha116]

Well this was originally suposed to be a thread were i asked a question but if it helped som1 else thats great. Thickbox really is an impressive tool.

(Just curious since when could guests post on x10?)