Hi
I know that the usage of Microsoft CDN improves the website performance when talks about .js But what about the images? The styles of jQuery UI themes are hosted too in CDN, and all the images of the themes also.
Using the styles of themes, and consequently images also, improves the performance like.js does?
Thanks
You will benefit for JavaScript, Images and CSS is the following ways...
The CDN will be geographically closer to the user, so less jumps for the request
The CDN will use compression where the client supports it
The CDN will be utilised by many websites, which may mean that the JavaScript, CSS and Images are already in the browser-cache, which means it won't even need to be requested
CDN content won't suck up any of your hosting bandwidth
The downsides of a CDN are
You do not have direct control over the content on the CDN. If a new version of jQuery is released, you can only use it once it is on the CDN.
You cannot guarantee the CDN will always exist, although it is more likely that Microsoft and Google will support the CDN for longer than a less well known company.
The CDN address may be displayed in the browser status bar when the resource is being loaded, which may or may not be a concern.
I don't agree on the Microsoft and Google are the safe bets. They're still relatively new. Google is free and their appspot domain engine is still blocked by a lot of enterprises for some reason. You don't want this as a customer.
Azure is blazingly fast and I'm vastly impressed with their service. But the real players in the CDN space are the guys like acamai, edgecast, etc. Really depends on that you want to do in the future.
But for your current requirements, absolutely, CDNs should be able to provide you what you want.