Google Hosting AJAX Frameworks

The title does not do this post justice, but perhaps that is becuase only web developers will get excited about this. One of the things about creating websites using AJAX is the size of the Javascript frameworks that need to be loaded into the site so the user can use the website. Sure you can speed up your website with GZIP compression and send the Javascript frameworks compressed and once the user has them they will be fine as long as they stay on your website. Unfortunately users don’t just use your website. They move on to another great AJAX enabled website and have to download the same Javascrpt frameworks all over again.

To make the user experience better for users all around the globe it would be great if the Javascript frameworks could be called from one central location and then it would be cached by the users browser and every visit to every website that uses that Javascript framework would be made faster. To make this possible Google has started to host five Javascript frameworks to help speed up access to your favourite websites. The five Javascript frameworks that Google is hosting include:

This could dramatically improve end user experiences on AJAX enabled websites. It can also save on bandwidth and improve load times for websites all around the world. Think about how much faster your favourite WordPress blogs will load if they are all loading the prototype framework from Google instead of your web browser downloading a new version on every blog. If you are interested in using the Javascript frameworks that Google is hosting take a look at the AJAX Libraries Developer’s Guide for more information about how to load the frameworks into your websites. I know I will be looking at some clients websites and evaluating if they can use this service from Google. It could improve load times and make the websites react faster for users.

Categories: web-programming  
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