css minification

[Vladimir Panteleev via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, 16 January 2015 at 17:40:40 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:
> I just added 
> https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/770, 
> which generates minified css files. This is because in the near 
> future css files will become heftier (more documentation 
> comments, more detailed styles etc).
>
> The disadvantage is that now one needs to be online to generate 
> documentation. Thoughts?

I would advise against this. If added, it should be opt-in.

I see the following issues:

- The service in question might be occasionally down, or might be 
shut down completely at some point. This makes it an additional 
point of failure.

- High website load or poor Internet speeds will increase the 
time needed to build the website.

- We can't know for sure that at some point the owners of 
cssminifier.com won't decide to inject evil code in the output. 
Even if you trust the owners, the service might get hacked with 
the same outcome.

- As the request goes over HTTP, you also need to trust every 
peer between your machine and the website to not perform a MITM 
attack.

I think relying on a random 3rd-party service is acceptable for 
an amateur or hobbyist website, which we are not. Instead, I 
suggest adding an optional (opt-in) rule which invokes an offline 
CSS minifier.