Very easy way of minimizing a few bytes of every request using Google’s Closure Compiler which is a java program for compressing javascript.

$ curl -0 http://closure-compiler.googlecode.com/files/compiler-latest.zip
$ unzip compiler-latest.zip -d ~/Applications/closure-compiler ; cd ~/Applications/closure-compiler
$ echo "// A simple function.
function hello(longName) {
  alert('Hello, ' + longName);
}
hello('New User');" > hello.js
$ java -jar compiler.jar --js hello.js --js_output_file hello-compiled.js
$ cat hello-compiled.js
function hello(a){alert("Hello, "+a)}hello("New User");
$ wc -c hello.js
101 hello.js
$ wc -c hello-compiled.js
56 hello-compiled.js

Rinse and repeat

$ curl -0 http://closure-compiler.googlecode.com/files/compiler-latest.zip

Download the good stuff

$ unzip compiler-latest.zip -d ~/Applications/closure-compiler ; cd ~/Applications/closure-compiler

Locate the executable in a standard location and go there

$ echo "// A simple function.
function hello(longName) {
  alert('Hello, ' + longName);
}
hello('New User');" > hello.js

Create a file with valid javascript in it

$ java -jar compiler.jar --js hello.js --js_output_file hello-compiled.js

Use the recently unzipped compiler.jar to take input from hello.js and generate its optimized version at hello-compiled.js. Note that there’s only one file to use, compiler.jar. Usable.

$ cat hello-compiled.js
function hello(a){alert("Hello, "+a)}hello("New User");

Dump the contents of the newly created file, just to verify what a minified javascript file could look like

$ wc -c hello.js
101 hello.js
$ wc -c hello-compiled.js
56 hello-compiled.js

Comparing bytes in each file shows almost 50% winnings, both in terms of lowering the storage needed but also for each request of that file.