Minify & Gzip vs Google CDN

Question

Should I minify/gzip my Jquery with my other scripts on my page, or use Google CDN for Jquery & JQuery UI and gzip my own stuff.

From what I can see its more likely to be faster to deliver from Google and there is a better chance the files will be cached already on the users machine, however its a couple of extra http request and atleast I know it will always be available.

Answer 1

You got it right. For widely-used librairies, using Google CDN is a good idea:

• uses less bandwith on your server
• resources availability is great
• servers location is good too (it's a CDN after all!)
• like you said, better chances these resources will be cached already on the user's side

The only downside:

• adds a DNS query, because you're hosting resources on an additional domain. Reducing DNS lookups is quite important.

So the anwser is "use Google CDN".