The main differences are gzip doesn't strip out the documentation, and you don't need to decompress it. So in some cases the minified version would be smaller a

The main differences are gzip doesn't strip out the documentation, and you don't need to decompress it. So in some cases the minified version would be smaller and a bit quicker. YMMV. I think it's trivial and you're right. Using gzip is easier and a bit more transparent. Related article I found: http://engineeredweb.com/blog/why-minify-javascript/ http://engineeredweb.com/blog/why-minify-javascript/