load scripts asynchronously

A couple solutions for async loading:

//this function will work cross-browser for loading scripts asynchronously
function loadScript(src, callback)
{
  var s,
      r,
      t;
  r = false;
  s = document.createElement('script');
  s.type = 'text/javascript';
  s.src = src;
  s.onload = s.onreadystatechange = function() {
    //console.log( this.readyState ); //uncomment this line to see which ready states are called.
    if ( !r && (!this.readyState || this.readyState == 'complete') )
    {
      r = true;
      callback();
    }
  };
  t = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0];
  t.parentNode.insertBefore(s, t);
}

If you've already got jQuery on the page, just use:

$.getScript(url, successCallback)*

Additionally, it's possible that your scripts are being loaded/executed before the document is done loading, meaning that you'd need to wait for document.ready before events can be bound to the elements.

It's not possible to tell specifically what your issue is without seeing the code.

The simplest solution is to keep all of your scripts inline at the bottom of the page, that way they don't block the loading of HTML content while they execute. It also avoids the issue of having to asynchronously load each required script.

If you have a particularly fancy interaction that isn't always used that requires a larger script of some sort, it could be useful to avoid loading that particular script until it's needed (lazy loading).

* scripts loaded with $.getScript will likely not be cached

For anyone who can use modern features such as the Promise object, the loadScript function has become significantly simpler:

function loadScript(src) {
    return new Promise(function (resolve, reject) {
        var s;
        s = document.createElement('script');
        s.src = src;
        s.onload = resolve;
        s.onerror = reject;
        document.head.appendChild(s);
    });
}

Be aware that this version no longer accepts a callback argument as the returned promise will handle callback. What previously would have been loadScript(src, callback) would now be loadScript(src).then(callback).

This has the added bonus of being able to detect and handle failures, for example one could call...

loadScript(cdnSource)
    .catch(loadScript.bind(null, localSource))
    .then(successCallback, failureCallback);

...and it would handle CDN outages gracefully.


HTML5's new 'async' attribute is supposed to do the trick. 'defer' is also supported in most browsers if you care about IE.

async - The HTML

<script async src="siteScript.js" onload="myInit()"></script>

defer - The HTML

<script defer src="siteScript.js" onload="myInit()"></script>

While analyzing the new adsense ad unit code I noticed the attribute and a search lead me here: http://davidwalsh.name/html5-async


I loaded the scripts asynchronously (html 5 has that feature) when all the scripts where done loading I redirected the page to index2.html where index2.html uses the same libraries. Because browsers have a cache once the page redirects to index2.html, index2.html loads in less than a second because it has all it needs to load the page. In my index.html page I also load the images that I plan on using so that the browser place those images on the cache. so my index.html looks like:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
    <title>Project Management</title>

    <!-- the purpose of this page is to load all the scripts on the browsers cache so that pages can load fast from now on -->

    <script type="text/javascript">

        function stylesheet(url) {
            var s = document.createElement('link');
            s.type = 'text/css';
            s.async = true;
            s.src = url;
            var x = document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0];
            x.appendChild(s);
        }

        function script(url) {
            var s = document.createElement('script');
            s.type = 'text/javascript';
            s.async = true;
            s.src = url;
            var x = document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0];
            x.appendChild(s);
        }

        //load scritps to the catche of browser
        (function () {            
                stylesheet('css/custom-theme/jquery-ui-1.8.16.custom.css');
                stylesheet('css/main.css');
                stylesheet('css/marquee.css');
                stylesheet('css/mainTable.css');

                script('js/jquery-ui-1.8.16.custom.min.js');
                script('js/jquery-1.6.2.min.js');
                script('js/myFunctions.js');
                script('js/farinspace/jquery.imgpreload.min.js');
                script('js/marquee.js');            
        })();

    </script>

    <script type="text/javascript">
       // once the page is loaded go to index2.html
        window.onload = function () {
            document.location = "index2.html";
        }
    </script>

</head>
<body>

<div id="cover" style="position:fixed; left:0px; top:0px; width:100%; height:100%; background-color:Black; z-index:100;">Loading</div>

<img src="images/home/background.png" />
<img src="images/home/3.png"/>
<img src="images/home/6.jpg"/>
<img src="images/home/4.png"/>
<img src="images/home/5.png"/>
<img src="images/home/8.jpg"/>
<img src="images/home/9.jpg"/>
<img src="images/logo.png"/>
<img src="images/logo.png"/>
<img src="images/theme/contentBorder.png"/>

</body>
</html>

another nice thing about this is that I may place a loader in the page and when the page is done loading the loader will go away and in a matte of milliseconds the new page will be running.

Tags:

Javascript

Html

Ajax

Asynchronous

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