Improving JavaScript Loadtime

One of the challenges of JavaScript developers is on how they can improve the loading time of their application. While JavaScript is a relatively light programming language, it could easily drag simply because it will require too much processing power from the browser. Since it does not require any prior downloads or clients, it will need it’s processing solely on internet connectivity as well as the processing power of the gadget.

But there are still things a developer could do to improve the loading time of JavaScript and/or Ajax and thankfully, these tools are used within the browser.

The Tools:

• The Web Developer Toolbar – A tool that could be fully integrated to Firefox, this small addition to the browser is every JavaScript developer’s must have tools. It’s very light and easy to install, the commands are very straightforward and it bears the function that could really help the loading time for developers: file size per page.  Although a developer already knows how heavy the coding would be in an application, the real numbers are not yet known. With this tool, the exact size of the application is known. The files that should be deleted or changed are immediately detected.

• Firebug Plug-in – Another must have tool for developers even if they are not on JavaScript. Firebug plug-in could be used to read each website and convert them into their basic coding. Unfortunately, this tool is even used by hackers who wanted to know more about the application.  But when they are used properly, it can tell so much about the online application for further development. In this case, Firebug is very useful so that developers could detect which functions are actually a resource hog and eats up a lot of bandwidth.

You may have noticed that these tools are all Firefox based. JavaScript and Mozilla always have a close relationship that the majority of functions of JavaScript could be easily interpreted in this browser. Add to that feature is the ability of the browser to be infused with additional functions.

Determining which files and functions that causes the delay in loadtimes in JavaScript is only half of the story. You still need to implement a technique to address these problems. Since these functions are still important for JavaScript and Ajax to continue, it has to be modified instead of being removed. Some of the functions have to be compressed.

Fortunately, there are a good number of tools online that you can use. JSLint is only one of the many compression tools a developer could use. It’s currently one of the most popular compression tools for JavaScript but there are still others that should do the job of compression without any problem.

But what you need to remember in selecting the appropriate tool is on its ability for debugging. It could be a very frustrating when the compressed function cannot be debugged since a compressed function without being debugged will not be read at all by any browser.