The optimization is completed within seconds to a few minutes. WebCrusher creates a comparison list of your files including file name, its original size, optimized size, and percent optimized. A large site may take quite a while to process. Click Export to save the optimized files.


Web Folder File List with Crushed Sizes
You can compare the originals to the compressed page or graphic in a separate window. If you think the quality of an optimized image isn’t good enough and that the original image is the one you want to use, no problem; just select the image you want to use. Once optimized, WebCrusher even helps you transfer your work to your web server.


Graphics Comparison Preview
Don’t worry about losing your files, because WebCrusher makes a copy of them in a folder inside your Documents folder and only works on the copies, not the originals. The optimized files are saved into that folder.

Overview

This program is very simple to use. Once it is set up, you simply drag and drop. I dropped a web site with 115 files into the WebCrusher box. I created these files in Adobe GoLive and then converted them to Dreamweaver 8. I didn’t go through any of the code before optimizing it with WebCrusher. The original size was 2,813,219 bytes and it was optimized to 2,629,197 bytes for a saving of 184,022 bytes. I think they use bytes to add to the drama. Of the files, the PDF, GIF, class, Java, and text were not changed. My reduced files should improve the load time from 10 to 20%.

One drawback is that once WebCrusher compacts your HTML pages, they can be very difficult to edit. No more comments, no more spaces between tags, so while the code is lean and mean, the page may be too difficult to read. Ilene notes that BBEdit, for example, creates table tags that are spaced across a page so that you can see easily the start and end of tables. WebCrusher doesn’t preserve that alignment, unless you uncheck a preference. She did pare over 7MBs of space from a 100MB site though.

The sites I tested didn’t involve much CSS, and I had edited and resized my graphics to reduce their size. My HTML authoring program helps me reduce my HTML pages, but I could reduce my graphic file sizes even more. It was handy using WebCrusher to do that for me. If I had to work with a small amount of server space, I would want to optimize every file. WebCrusher is worth its reasonable price. For those who have a tendency to use two spaces after a period or drop extra spaces into your text, WebCrusher can be of great value.

This review covers WebCrusher 1.2.2, but on Dec. 3rd Rage Software released the 1.3 update that adds color coded optimizations, fixed some PNG optimizations, and some issues with RapidWeaver and iWeb based web sites. I did not find any obvious bugs in the program though. If you build any web pages, you should download a copy and give it a try.