HTML Minifier

A fast and efficient command-line tool to minify your HTML, Razor views, and Web Forms views. Reduce file sizes, improve load times, and deliver a better user experience by removing unnecessary whitespace and comments from your HTML files.

✨ Features

• 🚀 Fast Processing - Minifies files and entire directory trees quickly with parallel processing
• ⚡ Parallel Processing - Utilizes all CPU cores for maximum performance (4-8x faster on multi-core systems)
• 📊 Beautiful Reporting - Comprehensive statistics with progress tracking and professional visual presentation
• 📁 Flexible Input - Process individual files, specific folders, or entire directory structures
• ⚙️ Configurable - Control line length and selectively disable minification features
• 🔧 Framework Support - Special handling for Knockout.js, Angular, and other comment-dependent frameworks
• 🎯 Targeted Minification - Choose what to minify: HTML comments, JavaScript comments, or Knockout comments
• 🛡️ Safe Minification - Preserves content inside <pre>, <textarea>, and <code> tags, and normalises attribute whitespace
• 🔄 CI/CD Ready - Easy integration with MSBuild and build pipelines

📦 Installation

1. Download the latest release from the releases page
2. Extract the HtmlMinifier.exe to your desired location
3. Add the tool to your PATH or reference it directly

🚀 Quick Start

Transform verbose HTML into compact, optimized code:

Before:

<h2>
    Admin Menu</h2>
<ul>
    <li>@Html.ActionLink("Edit blog entries", "List", "Admin")</li>
    <li>@Html.ActionLink("View Comments", "CommentList", "Admin")</li>
    <li>@Html.ActionLink("Clear Cache", "ClearCache", "Admin")</li>
</ul>

After:

<h2> Admin Menu</h2><ul><li>@Html.ActionLink("Edit blog entries", "List", "Admin")</li><li>@Html.ActionLink("View Comments", "CommentList", "Admin")</li><li>@Html.ActionLink("Clear Cache", "ClearCache", "Admin")</li></ul>

📖 Usage

Getting Help

View all available options:

HtmlMinifier.exe --help

Check the version:

HtmlMinifier.exe --version

Basic Usage

Minify all HTML files in a folder (including subfolders):

HtmlMinifier.exe "C:\Folder"

Advanced Options

Limit Line Length

Restrict the maximum number of characters per line:

HtmlMinifier.exe "C:\Folder" "60000"

Preserve Comments

For frameworks that rely on HTML comments (Angular, Knockout, etc.), preserve them:

HtmlMinifier.exe "C:\Folder" ignorehtmlcomments

Preserve JavaScript Comments

Keep JavaScript comments in your code:

HtmlMinifier.exe "C:\Folder" ignorejscomments

Preserve Knockout Comments

Specifically preserve Knockout.js comments:

HtmlMinifier.exe "C:\Folder" ignoreknockoutcomments

Multiple Targets

Minify Multiple Folders

HtmlMinifier.exe "C:\Folder\fld1" "C:\Folder\fld2"

Minify Specific Files

HtmlMinifier.exe "C:\Folder\file1.html" "C:\Folder\file2.html"

🔨 Build Integration

Integrate HTML Minifier into your build process for automatic minification during deployment. Check out this detailed guide on using HTML Minifier with MSBuild.

🛡️ What Gets Preserved

The following content is never altered by minification:

• <pre>, <textarea>, <code> tags — internal whitespace is kept exactly as-is
• IE conditional comments — <!--[if IE]>, <!--[if !IE]><!-->, and <!--<![endif]--> patterns are all preserved
• #include virtual comments — ASP.NET server-side includes are left intact
• Knockout comments — <!-- ko --> / <!-- /ko --> are preserved when ignoreknockoutcomments is set
• Razor declarations — @model, @using, @inherits are kept and correctly re-arranged
• Attribute values — content inside quotes is preserved; leading/trailing whitespace is normalised

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

📝 Requirements

• .NET Framework (Windows)
• Supports HTML, Razor (.cshtml), and Web Forms (.aspx) files

📄 License

Copyright (C) Dean Hume 2013 - 2025

Released under the MIT License

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Made with ❤️ by Dean Hume