Where do you include the jQuery library from? Google JSAPI? CDN?

Question

There are a few ways to include jQuery and jQuery UI and I\'m wondering what people are using?

• Google JSAPI
• jQuery\'s site
• your own site/serv

Answer 1

I host it with my other js files on my own server, and, that's that point, combine and minify them (with django-compresser, here, but that's not the point) to be served as just one js file, with everything the site needs put into it. You'll need to serve your own js files anyway, so I see no reason to not add the extra jquery bytes there too - some more kbs are much more cheaper to transfer, than more requests to be made. You are not dependent to anyone, and as soon as your minified js is cached, you're super fast as well.

On first load, a CDN based solution might win, because you must load the additional jquery kilobytes from your own server (but, without an additional request). I doubt the difference is noticable, though. And then, on a first load with cleared cache, your own hosted solution will probably always be much faster, because of more requests (and DNS lookups) needed, to fetch the CDN jquery.

I wonder how this point is almost never mentioned, and how CDNs seem to take over the world :)