drupal: so many js and css files?

Question

I've realized I'm loading a lot of resources (24 css and 17 js files) using Drupal. I've several modules installed and they all come with a css and js file.

For my website I'm only using 1 additional js plugin (all the other 16 come with Drupal modules).

I've not installed useless modules. They are all necessary, and they require js such as swfobject, ajax_views, jquery.media, spamspan, lightbox (modal, video and default js files), etc

Same thing with css files: ckeditor, filefield, lightbox, tagadelic, uploadfield, fieldgroup, vews, taxonomy_super_select, html-element, tabs, messages... etc

For my website, I only use my theme css zen.css of course.

So.. is this normal ? Or I should remove all this stuff? Are drupal websites normally heavy ?

thanks

Answer 1

Count of js and css are not so big problem - you can enable optimizing css and js in Perfomance and get only 2 files (if there is not dynamical adding). If these files have too much size - may be solved via using compressing with special modules.

All of these recommend to enable on production site, not at development time.

Answer 2

That's the problem with some content management systems: you get lots of overhead whether you need it all or not. If you remove items, the way the Drupal editor works will suffer or stop working.

If you're concerned with site loading speed, you can pull jQuery from Google: http://code.google.com/p/gempaq/wiki/Google_AJAX_API_for_Drupal and look into lots of different kinds of ways to speed load times here on SO Newest 'cdn' Questions - Stack Overflow and Best Practices for Speeding Up Your Web Site.