Propaganda Party: The Pop Stalin Design Manifesto

With a fair amount of caution and curiousity, I tried this service with a horrible name, CSS Superdouche. According to the site:
This tool can significantly reduce the size and complexity of your CSS by programmatically stripping unneeded content, stripping redundant calls, and intelligently grouping the remaining element names.

After deciding to give it a whirl, I noticed two things—first it reduced my blogs’ CSS file by a whole 1k (which isn’t much) and secondly, when I implemented the “cleansed” CSS file my layout was, well, jacked up! Uh-oh! So I quickly pasted my original CSS back in place and all was right with the world and my blog. Apparently the tool isn’t as intelligent as claimed.

I don’t know why it messed up my sites’ layout but it did and that was enough for me to confirm that caution needs to be used when implementing these kinds of services. Who knows, maybe I’m writing my CSS incorrectly in the first place—though it does validate—but if a tool that is “dugg” by over 1,000 people is going to be offered, the developer needs, at the least, have a disclaimer along with it—something that reads use at your own risk.

If you are going to use this kind of service, please be sure to back up your original file because more than likely, you’re going to need it.