Managing CSS on large websites

Question

I've recently begun working on a very large, high traffic website. We would very much like to reduce the size and number of our style sheets, minification is one route we will pursue but is anyone aware of any tools for checking ID and class use? Literally scanning the website to see what's active and what isn't?

Alternatively any software for redacting the css to reduce repition and size?

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

Literally scanning the website to see what's active and what isn't?

Dust-Me Selectors is a Firefox plugin that you can use to show what css rules aren't being used. http://www.sitepoint.com/dustmeselectors/

Answer 2

I can certainly recommend Page Speed (http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/) by Google to check the performance (and possible improvements) of your webpages. Page Speed also checks CSS and usage of classes on your webpages.

It is used in combination with Firebug.

Answer 3

• Gzip compression in the webserver.
• Expiry dates that lie far in the future to avoid redownloading the CSS files.