Why to avoid in-page <script>

March 9, 20233 Views

When dealing with the structure of javascript in a website. Currently i try to seperate all my javascript into files, something like app.js.

Although is it better just to place scripts on the actual page they appear, with tags? and if so what are the reasons?

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2 comments

Anonymous says:

March 9, 2023 at 2:57 pm

The general rule of thumb is to place your script files in an external file. The Yahoo Developer site also calls for this:

Using external files in the real world generally produces faster pages
because the JavaScript and CSS files are cached by the browser.
JavaScript and CSS that are inlined in HTML documents get downloaded
every time the HTML document is requested. This reduces the number of
HTTP requests that are needed, but increases the size of the HTML
document. On the other hand, if the JavaScript and CSS are in external
files cached by the browser, the size of the HTML document is reduced
without increasing the number of HTTP requests.

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Anonymous says:

March 9, 2023 at 2:58 pm

To do not forget WordPress in this post, you should know that this CMS has requirements concerning the call of javascript files : always have wp_head() just before the closing </head> and have wp_footer() just before the closing </body>

This is in the case you call your external files using the <script> tag. But in WordPress the best way is to enqueue it using: http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/wp_enqueue_script

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