Ok, this is not new. I’ve also written about this a few times in the past.
The thing is that removing whitespace is a very tricky discipline that is different from site to site. At least that was what I thought until very recently.
For some unexplained reason I started working on a little simple method to remove whitespace in a way so it works on all websites without breaking any HTML. Maybe not unexplained since I’ve written about it so many times that it would seem I got a secret obsession.
Obsession or not, here is the code I ended up with after a few hours of hacking. Just copy the code onto your base page or master page and watch the magic.
private static readonly Regex REGEX_BETWEEN_TAGS = new Regex(@">s+<", RegexOptions.Compiled);
private static readonly Regex REGEX_LINE_BREAKS = new Regex(@"ns+", RegexOptions.Compiled);
/// <summary>
/// Initializes the <see cref="T:System.Web.UI.HtmlTextWriter"></see> object and calls on the child
/// controls of the <see cref="T:System.Web.UI.Page"></see> to render.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="writer">The <see cref="T:System.Web.UI.HtmlTextWriter"></see> that receives the page content.</param>
protected override void Render(HtmlTextWriter writer)
{
using (HtmlTextWriter htmlwriter = new HtmlTextWriter(new System.IO.StringWriter()))
{
base.Render(htmlwriter);
string html = htmlwriter.InnerWriter.ToString();
html = REGEX_BETWEEN_TAGS.Replace(html, "> <");
html = REGEX_LINE_BREAKS.Replace(html, string.Empty);
writer.Write(html.Trim());
}
}
Remember that whitespace removal speeds up rendering in especially IE and reduces the overall weight of your page.
