What is minification in web development?

Minification in web development refers to the process of removing unnecessary characters from code, such as whitespace, comments, and formatting, without altering its functionality. This technique helps reduce file sizes, leading to faster loading times and improved performance for websites. By streamlining the code, developers can enhance the efficiency of web applications, making them more user-friendly and responsive. The other options do not accurately describe minification; increasing file size hinders performance, defining layout pertains to CSS or HTML structure rather than minification itself, and optimizing images focuses on media files rather than code.