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J Scott Erickson
11,883 PointsScript Includes
Probably a minor detail with a simple answer.
In all of the videos and workspaces so far in the AJAX course (thanks for making it btw!), the script includes are at the top of the index.html files.
However, I was led to believe that the most common practice (according to the JavaScript and JQuery courses, thanks again!) to include the script tag and thus the files at the end of the html. This keeps you from having to check document.ready and helps avoid loading conflicts.
In my head it sort of makes sense to say that you could include JQuery at the top and then your own scripts at the bottom and this would avoid you using JQuery in your scripts before the rest of the document has loaded....
Anywho, any guidance on this would be appreciated.
1 Answer
Aaron Graham
18,033 PointsThere are a lot of opinions about this. I believe that another reason for including them at the bottom of the body, is that fetching the script file from the server is not asynchronous, meaning that if you have a large script file, it will have to download before your body loads. Putting them at the bottom of the body allows the body to load before fetching the script files from the server. This might help you out.
Dave McFarland
Treehouse TeacherHaving the body load BEFORE the body has some upsides and some downsides. If you're using jQuery to make serious user interface changes to a page -- for example turn an unordered list and a bunch of divs into a tabbed panel, hiding content that should only appear after user interaction and so on, you probably don't want the body of the page to render BEFORE the JavaScript -- because the JavaScript is transforming the presentation of the HTML, you don't want to see the body in one way, then load the JavaScript, then see the body in another format.
It really depends on the situation.
J Scott Erickson
11,883 PointsThanks! I'll have to do some experimenting with loading both ways and manipulating the DOM with jQuery before a load.
J Scott Erickson
11,883 PointsJ Scott Erickson
11,883 PointsHe sort of addresses it in a later video, saying that you can really do either...
I'm still a bit curious to know what is ACTUALLY, considered best practice.