Should I load entire jQuery UI JS/CSS or only the parts that I need on a certain page?

Question

I know what many of you will say. This is a stupid question, or maybe this is not the right forum, or depend on the application, etc.

I am just wondering if I have a custom theme, that I might change in future is it a good idea to separate the jQuery UI, I mean the JS classes and CSS in smaller chunks (files like droppable,etc.) and include only the one that I need on certain page or keep them together and load the entire UI on every page. Both have positives and negatives. I am just not sure which is better.

What is your opinion. Any different approach possible?

Answer 1

My personal opinion is, if you want to keep up to date in the future, it would be far easier to keep the jQuery UI files complete, otherwise in the future to update you will have to spend time splitting the new versions.

If there are features you know you don't and won't use, you could remove those during the download by simply selecting the features you will use.

I also think the load time would be insignificant, once the browser has loaded the script, it is likely to cache a copy of it so a user isn't reloading the script with every page. Plus the server only has to serve two files, instead of the overheads to potentially serve multiple files.

It will also help for future development of your site scripting in the sense if you want to add an extra feature to your script, you won't need to remember if you have loaded the required js/css part files.

Answer 2

i think it will be better if you load entire jQuery ui js/css, because if in future if you want to do some thing new in jquery then again you have to look at those parts which would be required to do this stuff, and you have to make extra efforts to put those chunk of code in your js file so i think loading the entire jquery will be better approach!!