What if I told you that you could harness Google’s servers to load Jquery, Mootools, Scriptaculous or even Prototype on your blog? There are hundreds of servers spread throughout the world dedicated to loading your JavaScript that much faster. Google recently launched the “Google AJAX Libraries API” which allows you to use Google’s CDN to load popular JavaScript frameworks, many of which are in use by web developers today.
Every blog will use a JavaScript framework to “spice” up their blog with animation and usability (I happen to use Jquery). The only down side of using these libraries is the 50KB+ download that it takes up to deliver the framework to each visitor. Not only does loading a large JS file block parallel downloads, it won’t start loading other content until it is completely finished. However, Google’s free CDN eliminates this problem and allows you to use their cacheable libraries on your blog.
How to Harness Google’s AJAX Libraries API and CDN:
First, you need to call Google’s JSAPI file to allow Google to serve the right files on your blog:
<script src="http://www.google.com/jsapi"></script>
Now you are able to load any supported javascript library through Google:
<script> // Load jQuery google.load("jquery", "1.4.1");
</script>
You’re now serving the latest version of Jquery on your blog using Google’s Free CDN. Another benefit of using this CDN is the cacheable aspect of it – If a user has a cached version of Google’s Jquery, they won’t even have to re-download it when they visit your blog!
Save Money:
You save 50KB+ per visitor in bandwidth by outsourcing it to Google.
Save Time:
Well, technically it isn’t your time, but rather the visitors’. That just means they can read your articles quicker and convert into a fulltime reader! 
16 Comments
Thanks for the tip, Brad. I wasn’t aware of the google ajax libs.
Btw, “when they visitor” should be “when they visit”.
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Opps. Thanks Artem.
Long time did not optimize my blog already. Does this speed up a lot?
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It speeds it up as the visitor doesn’t have to download the Jquery.
Thanks for the speed up tip this looks great.
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Very cool, I didn’t know that this was possible. 50kb usually downloads quickly for most users, but every second saved is a good thing. Thanks for this.
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50KB saved is better than serving the same file an additional time
Glad you liked the tip.
Indeed these chached javascripts are better choice because most of the users on the web will have that version of javascript already. This definitely speeds up things. Another good way to speed up things is by caching up everything from the webserver.
Caching Images, JS and CSS is an excellent way to make any blog or website fast loading.
I use Amazon and will make a comparison with Google free CDN
Looks like a better way to reduce the website load time.. Will give it a try!! BTW is there a good tool or website to check the load time of multiple inner pages of a blog?
I wonder that is this trick will help blog for fast loading?
I will surely try this technique, Brad.. Thanks for the info..
Good tip! Another option would be to use Coral which is a free CDN. The idea is that while using Google’s servers to load jQuery or other big Javascript library out there, you’d still have some problems for making more requests than you actually need. I load everything from my own server and the minified, gzipped Javascript files only take up to 50kb, and they’re cacheable. This doesn’t solve the problem for visitors that live far from my server, but using Coral you can solve this issue as well.
I would still recommend the Google CDN for websites where a server-side language isn’t available or where one of the available libraries is the only big script used.
Good article!
hey mate, we can install wp plugin for loading ajax libraries, it works well
and ur trick gave me idea to find out ..thanks a lot..
Can you use this and another ( paid ) CDN at the same time ? Wish I knew where to insert the code you provided. I tried to put it in the header , but it only gave me one more thing to load
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[...] encourage you to utilize this offer.In the previous post, I talked about how to make use of Google’s Ajax Libraries CDN to serve Jquery, Mootools and other Javascript frameworks to your visitors, but to speed up [...]