I usually use a combination of JSMin and the Telerik script manager to minify my JavaScript and CSS, however the ASP.NET MVC 4 beta has built in minification, which reduces the number of requests and general payload size, resulting in faster and better performing applications.
This feature allows you can create custom bundles where you specify the resource name and order of your stylesheets and JavaScript files.
Introducing ASP.NET MVC 4 BundleTables
Upon creating a new project in ASP.NET MVC 4, you’ll notice that your default _Layout.cshtml file will reference System.Web.Optimization and BundleTable.Bundles in its head.
According to Microsoft, these references are for the beta and will be accessed via a helper in the RTM release, expected sometime next quarter.
<link href="@System.Web.Optimization.BundleTable.Bundles.ResolveBundleUrl("~/Content/css")" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<link href="@System.Web.Optimization.BundleTable.Bundles.ResolveBundleUrl("~/Content/themes/base/css")" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
http://@System.Web.Optimization.BundleTable.Bundles.ResolveBundleUrl(
If you look at the actual source code in the browser, you will see these get rendered as:
<link href="/Content/css?v=x" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<link href="/Content/themes/base/css?v=y" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
/Scripts/js?v=z
The CSS and JavaScript files in this project are minified and compressed and the querystring parameter, v, is a hash of the current files being served. This will change when you alter your .js and .css files.