5 ms·

Wouldn't this be solved by hosting it on your own site?

by Zergy 12y ago

mhogomchungu 12y ago
I assume that will work,but it will introduce two problems. 1. Keep a local copy means you will be the one paying for the bandwidth to serve it. 2. You will have to manually update your local copy everytime upstream makes improvements. Having things locally increases reliability but it carries its own costs.
- kcbanner 12y ago
  How is getting upstream "improvements" without having a chance to test them a good thing?
  - danielweber 12y ago
    "Users want and demand a rich computing experience."[1] [1] http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/18.85.html#subj6 http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/18.85.html#subj6
- krisdol 12y ago
  But a minified library is loaded once per visitor (then cached) and is lilely is not going to have a greater bandwidth impact than any one of your actual pages. My site surprisingly breaking without me making changes to it (whether due to third party unreliability, security issues with their server, or surprise updates) sounds like a really, really bad thing.
- wdewind 12y ago
  No these are not the reasons: 1. This cost is minimal, and most of the time will be served from cache anyway. I'd be willing to stake a claim that literally zero people ever have worried about the cost of serving jQuery when they weren't already worried about the cost of serving a bunch of other shit that eliminating just jQuery wouldn't fix. 2. This is completely undesirable, and doesn't happen anyway because you like to a specific version which does not change from under you. The arguments in favor of hosting it on a CDN like googles are: 1) Clients who visit other sites will precache the file, so there is a chance they wont even need to load jQuery at all, and this can increase perf 2) Pushing some files to different domains can decrease load times because browsers can load files from multiple domains in parallel instead of serially like they would from one domain. 3) For smaller sites the google CDN is likely actually more dependable than your own. But if you've invested in a CDN this is no longer true.
- tlianza 12y ago
  #2 isn't solved with a CDN since you'd always hotlink a specific version - the version you tested your code with. The main reason I think isn't even really #1 (cost) but a general assumption that CDNs are faster than your servers, and the chance that if multiple sites are sharing one of these CDNs, you actually have first-time users who can visit your site a bit faster because they already have that resource cached.
  - Zikes 12y ago
    Some CDNs like Google's will let you specify just the major version, so in the case of jQuery it would serve 1.<latest> or 2.<latest>. Generally undesirable in a production environment, though.
- BlakePetersen 12y ago
  Paying for jQ bandwidth is like paying for air, seriously. With jQ, you're most likely defining the version you need, so getting upstream improvements with jQ is a bit more involved than the library simply updating itself if you aren't using the edge version. A better argument for using a CDN is that jQ library is likely going to be cached if the user's been on the web for more than 5 minutes. Chances are, your version will be one that's cached and, instead of waiting for the downloading of a library that already exists on the users system, the library is immediately loaded and perceived PLT is decreased as a result. There are also numerous CDNs out there, I would use a fallback stack to ping the next CDN in line as it would be a cold day if every major CDN that hosts jQ were to lose SSL support for a time.
- bdcravens 12y ago
  You will have to manually update your local copy everytime upstream makes improvements. Isn't this true of every library, framework, language, kernel, etc, that drives websites?
- bdcravens 12y ago
  Keep a local copy means you will be the one paying for the bandwidth to serve it. This should never be a consideration. It's not really stealing bandwidth, since all are welcome to download, but the idea that an asset my site (which presumably makes money) needs should be paid for by someone else really is in the same ballpark ethically.

Wouldn't this be solved by hosting it on your own site?

by Zergy 12y ago

Wouldn't this be solved by hosting it on your own site?

I assume that will work,but it will introduce two problems. 1. Keep a local copy means you will be the one paying for the bandwidth to serve it. 2. You will have to manually update your local copy everytime upstream makes improvements. Having things locally increases reliability but it carries its own costs.

kcbanner 12y ago
How is getting upstream "improvements" without having a chance to test them a good thing?
- danielweber 12y ago
  "Users want and demand a rich computing experience."[1] [1] http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/18.85.html#subj6 http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/18.85.html#subj6
krisdol 12y ago
But a minified library is loaded once per visitor (then cached) and is lilely is not going to have a greater bandwidth impact than any one of your actual pages. My site surprisingly breaking without me making changes to it (whether due to third party unreliability, security issues with their server, or surprise updates) sounds like a really, really bad thing.
wdewind 12y ago
No these are not the reasons: 1. This cost is minimal, and most of the time will be served from cache anyway. I'd be willing to stake a claim that literally zero people ever have worried about the cost of serving jQuery when they weren't already worried about the cost of serving a bunch of other shit that eliminating just jQuery wouldn't fix. 2. This is completely undesirable, and doesn't happen anyway because you like to a specific version which does not change from under you. The arguments in favor of hosting it on a CDN like googles are: 1) Clients who visit other sites will precache the file, so there is a chance they wont even need to load jQuery at all, and this can increase perf 2) Pushing some files to different domains can decrease load times because browsers can load files from multiple domains in parallel instead of serially like they would from one domain. 3) For smaller sites the google CDN is likely actually more dependable than your own. But if you've invested in a CDN this is no longer true.
tlianza 12y ago
#2 isn't solved with a CDN since you'd always hotlink a specific version - the version you tested your code with. The main reason I think isn't even really #1 (cost) but a general assumption that CDNs are faster than your servers, and the chance that if multiple sites are sharing one of these CDNs, you actually have first-time users who can visit your site a bit faster because they already have that resource cached.
- Zikes 12y ago
  Some CDNs like Google's will let you specify just the major version, so in the case of jQuery it would serve 1.<latest> or 2.<latest>. Generally undesirable in a production environment, though.
BlakePetersen 12y ago
Paying for jQ bandwidth is like paying for air, seriously. With jQ, you're most likely defining the version you need, so getting upstream improvements with jQ is a bit more involved than the library simply updating itself if you aren't using the edge version. A better argument for using a CDN is that jQ library is likely going to be cached if the user's been on the web for more than 5 minutes. Chances are, your version will be one that's cached and, instead of waiting for the downloading of a library that already exists on the users system, the library is immediately loaded and perceived PLT is decreased as a result. There are also numerous CDNs out there, I would use a fallback stack to ping the next CDN in line as it would be a cold day if every major CDN that hosts jQ were to lose SSL support for a time.
bdcravens 12y ago
You will have to manually update your local copy everytime upstream makes improvements. Isn't this true of every library, framework, language, kernel, etc, that drives websites?
bdcravens 12y ago
Keep a local copy means you will be the one paying for the bandwidth to serve it. This should never be a consideration. It's not really stealing bandwidth, since all are welcome to download, but the idea that an asset my site (which presumably makes money) needs should be paid for by someone else really is in the same ballpark ethically.