Jens Oliver Meiert

HTML Minifier Next: Now With Lightning CSS

Published on Nov 5, 2025, filed under , . (Share this on Mastodon or Bluesky?)

After recent updates to HTML Minifier Next (HMN), another major change:

As clean-css, which enabled CSS minification, had been discontinued and therefore provided degrading results, HMN is now using Lightning CSS.

Why Lightning CSS? I didn’t make this a big thing—it seems solid, it seems fast, and it has proven to work well in many projects. (Bad call? Please let me know!)

And that’s that—although a breaking change for some projects (refer to the migration notes), HMN now comes with improved CSS tooling.

Check the docs, try it out, and let me know if there are any issues!

About Me

Jens Oliver Meiert, on November 9, 2024.

I’m Jens (long: Jens Oliver Meiert), and I’m a web developer, manager, and author. I’ve been working as a technical lead and engineering manager for companies you’ve never heard of and companies you use every day, I’m an occasional contributor to web standards (like HTML, CSS, WCAG), and I write and review books for O’Reilly and Frontend Dogma.

I love trying things, not only in web development and engineering management, but also in other areas like philosophy. Here on meiert.com I share some of my experiences and views. (I value you being critical, interpreting charitably, and giving feedback.)