I wanted a quick and easy way to minify a CSS file for this site, without adding any fancy build tools like webpack, using a quick command.

The ideal workflow was:

• Open a regular CSS file.
• Minify the current file.
• Save over the file.

After some digging and a node library, I came up with this.

1. Install Minify via NPM

   npm install -g minify
   

2. Open css file in vim

   vim style.css
   

3. Now that you are in vim, create a new line at the top of the file using Shift + O
4. Read in the existing file, parse it through minify and paste it in place.

   :r !minify %
   

5. Move down a line to the uncompressed css and delete the rest of the file using d + G

If you are looking to minify lots of files for an app there are clearly better options, but if you just want to shrink the size of a single file on a static site this is my new favorite.