Order of DOM Execution Issue - javascript

I have some JavaScript in the HEAD tag that dynamically inserts an asynchronously loading script tag before the last script on the page (that has been currently parsed). This dynamically included script tag contains JavaScript that needs to parse the DOM after the DOM is available, but before all images AND script tags have been loaded in. It's important that the JavaScript starts executing before all JS has been loaded in, because if there is a hanging script, this would lead to a bad user experience. This means I can't wait for the DOMContentLoaded event to fire. I don't have any flexibility as to where I place the first bit of JavaScript that is dynamically including the script tag.
My question is, is it safe for me to start parsing through the DOM right away, without waiting for the DOMContentLoaded event? If not, is there a way for me to do this without waiting for the DOMContentLoaded event?

...JavaScript in the HEAD ... dynamically inserts an asynchronously loading script tag before the last script on the page...
I'm assuming the loader script is inline, meaning that the highlighted bit actually refers to the "current" script element i.e. the loader. This happens since only the html preceding the loader script tag has been parsed and interpreted, so the inserted script tag is actually still in the head and not at the bottom of the page. So the target script is limited to performing DOM operations on preceding elements only, unless you wrap the code into a DOM ready callback... which is what you're trying to avoid in the first place!
Basically you want to load all html so that the page is visible/scannable, start loading images/stylesheets (which occurs in non-blocking threads) and then load any javascript. One approach is to put your target script at the bottom of the page, just pick their order correctly (interactivity first, enhancements second, third party analytics/social media integration/anything else super-heavy last) and adjust for your needs. Technically it still blocks the page load, but there are only scripts left at the bottom of the page anyway (and since they are at the bottom, you would be able to directly manipulate DOM as soon as they're loaded, minus some IE7 quirks).
There is a relevant rant/overview I like to link to that provides decent examples and some timing trivia on use and abuse of DOM ready callbacks, as well as the "other side of the story" on why stellar performance could be of lower value than a sane dependency management framework. The subject of latter is far too broad to be exhausted in one answer, but something like requirejs documentation should give you a fair idea of how the pattern works.
Perhaps another pattern for to consider is building an SPA - single page application which leverages asynchronous access to content chunks rather than the "traditional" navigating between complete pages. The pattern comes with an underestimated but rather significant performance benefit from not having to parse and re-execute shared javascript on every page, which would also address your (valid) concern about third-party js performance. After all, just a good caching policy would do wonders for loading time, but poor javascript code or massive frameworks' execution overhead remains.
Update: Figured this out. With your specific scenario in mind (i.e. no control over markup per se, and wanting to be the last script to execute), you should wrap the insertion of the async script element into DOM into a 0ms setTimeout callback:
setTimeout(function(){
//the rest is how GA operates
var targetScript = document.createElement('script');
targetScript.type = 'text/javascript';
targetScript.async = true;
targetScript.src = 'target.js';
var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(targetScript, s);
}, 0);
Due to the single-threaded nature of the environment, js setTimeout callback is basically added to a queue for 0ms-delayed execution as soon as the thread is no longer busy (more thorough explanation here). So the browser isn't even aware of the need to load, let alone execute, the target script until after all "higher priority" code has been completed! And since DOM is operational when the script tag is being added, you will not have to check for it explicitly in the target script itself (which is handy for when it's loaded "instantly" from cache).

The behavior of the following techniques make it safe to parse DOM ...
Using window load or DomContentLoaded event
Declare or inject your script at the bottom of the page
Place "async" attribute on your script tag
or doing this:
<script>
setTimeout(function(){
// script declared inside here will execute after the DOM is parsed
},0);
</script>
Also, these will NOT BLOCK the page loading in DOM.
There is no need to call the DomContentLoaded event when declaring script below any DOM you are depending on UNLESS you are needing to do size calculations or positioning as images/video will change the sizing of things if width/height is not specified.
Here is some scenarios where this works.
DEPENDENT DOM IS ABOVE
<script src="jquery.js"></script>
<script>
$('mydom').slideDown('fast');
</script>
or try this:
<script>
// won't fart
setTimeout(function(){ console.log(document.getElementById('mydom').innerHTML); },0);
</script>
DEPENDENT DOM IS BELOW or ABOVE (dont' matter)
Here's my little test for you to see setTimeout working as its one of those strange things I didn't notice until recently so its nice to see a working example of it.
http://jsfiddle.net/FFLL2/

Yes, you should wait for the user agent to tell you that the DOM is loaded.
However, there is more than one way to do so.
There is a difference between onreadystatechange to interactive and DOMContentLoaded.
According http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/the-end.html
the first thing the user agent does, after stopping parsing the document, is setting the
document readiness to "interactive".
The user agent does not wait for scripts to be loaded.
When the document readiness changes, the user agent will fire readystatechange at the Document object.
So if the scripts you are worrying about are non-inline, you might hook up with readystatechange.
Talking about cross-browser: This is the spec.

I strongly advise you to fully read the following article which delves in detail into mysteries of script loading and actual DOM readiness and when is it safe to do what with what, also taking into account browser disrepancies.
http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/speed/script-loading/

Related

Two different ways of putting the script at the bottom - what are the differences?

What are the differences between the two solutions below ?
In particular, is there a good reason to favour 2 over 1. (note: Please assume the name of the script to load is known. The question is just about if there is value in creating a minimal script to load a script in the given situation )
1 - Script At The Bottom
<html>
<body>
...
...
<script src='myScript.js'></script>
</body>
</html>
2 - Script at the bottom loads external script
<html>
<body>
...
...
<script>
// minimal script to load another script
var script = document.createElement('script');
script.src = 'myScript.js'
document.body.appendChild(script);
</script>
</body>
</html>
One important feature of the second one is that it allows the browser to finish parsing the page immediately, without waiting for the script to load. That's because the first example allows the script to use document.write to change the parsing state around the <script> tag, while the second one doesn't.
Now, we know that it's at the bottom of the page so that there isn't any important content left to parse, but this is still an important difference. It's not until parsing is done that the browser fires the popular DOMContentLoaded event. In method 1, the event fires after the script loads and executes. In method 2, the event fires before the script starts loading.
Here are some examples. In these demos, a DOMContentLoaded listener changes the background color to yellow. We try to load a script that takes 3 seconds to load.
http://jsfiddle.net/35ccs/
http://jsfiddle.net/VtwUV/
(edit: Maybe jsfiddle wasn't the best place to host these demos. It doesn't show the result until the slow-loading script loads. Be sure to click Run again once it loads, to see what happens.)
Pick the approach that's best for your application. If you know you need the script to run before DOMContentLoaded, go with method 1. Otherwise, method 2 is pretty good in most cases.
1. Script at the bottom
When you use a "synchronous" script tag, it will block the browser from rendering the page until the script is loaded and executed. This method has the following effects:
Regardless of where you put the script tag, the browser cannot fire DOMContentLoaded until the script is downloaded and executed.
Placing such a script tag at the bottom only ensures that the browsers has rendered all content before getting blocked by the script.
2. Script at the bottom loads external script
When you inject a script tag using JavaScript, it will create an "asynchronous" script tag that does not block the browser. This method has the following effects:
Regardless of where you put the JavaScript code that generates the script tag, the browser executes it as soon as it is available without blocking the page. The DOMContentLoaded fires when it should; irrespective of whether the script has downloaded/executed.
The second approach has the following advantages:
The script that injects a script tag can be placed anywhere including document head.
The script will not block the rendering.
DOMContentLoaded event does not wait for the script.
The second approach has the following disadvantages:
You cannot use document.write in such scripts. If you do, such statements might wipe the document clean.
Asynchronous execution does not mean that browser has finished parsing the page. Keep the script executes as soon as it is available clause in mind.
Execution order is not guaranteed. Example: If you load "library.js" and "use-library.js" using injected script tags, it is possible for "use-library.js" to load and execute before "library.js".
Having said all that, there is another method for loading scripts, with three variations:
<script src="myScript.js" async></script>
<script src="myScript.js" defer></script>
<script src="myScript.js" async defer></script>
Regarding Steve Souders's work: he proposed 6 techniques for loading scripts without blocking. The async and defer attributes introduced in HTML5 cover the Script DOM Element and Script Defer techniques and their browser support is more than enough for you to worry about the other techniques.
These two ways of initializing a script are basically the same, although theres no reason to use the second way if you can directly put in the result. However you can wrap the second example in a $(document).ready() method for example which would lead to sort of a lazy loading effect. This basically means that the page would load first and after the loading of the page is finished it would load the script. Or of course you can create a method which initializes a certain script this way. It's useful when you have a large script which is used only in some situations. This would prevent loading it unless you need it, thus decreasing the overall loading time.
This isn't a direct answer to your question, but it's good to know regardless.
The 2nd approach is sometimes used as a library fallback.
For example, you load jQuery from the Google CDN. But, if it were to fail for any reason, load jQuery from your own local copy.
Here's how the popular HTML5 Boilerplate recommends doing this:
<script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.11.0/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script>window.jQuery || document.write('<script src="js/vendor/jquery-1.11.0.min.js"><\/script>')</script>
The first method means that the script tag is hardcoded in. The second method dynamically adds a script tag to the bottom of the page using JavaScript. The benefit of the second method is that you can add additional logic if needed to modify the script tag. Perhaps you might want to load a different script file based on culture, browser or some other factor you can determine in JavaScript. The second method also causes the JavaScript file to be loaded without blocking the loading of the rest of the web page. In method one the page will stop loading when it gets to the script tag, load the JavaScript file, then finish loading the rest of the page. Since this tag is at the bottom of your page it doesn't make too much of a difference.
If you are creating a Windows Store app using JavaScript then the first method is recommended as this will allow the app to bytecode cache the JavaScript file which will make it load up faster.

Javascript non-blocking scripts, why don't simply put all scripts before </body> tag?

In order to avoid javascript to block webpage rendering, can't we just put all all our JS files/code to be loaded/executed simply before the closing </body> tag?
All JS files and code would be downloaded and executed only after the all page has being rendered, so what's the need for tricks like the one suggested in this article about non blocking techniques to load JS files. He basically suggests to use code like:
document.getElementsByTagName("head")[0].appendChild(script);
in order to defer script laod while letting the webpage to be rendered, thus resulting in fast rendering speed of the webpage.
But without using this type of non-blocking technique (or other similar techniques), wouldn't we achieve the same non-blocking result by simply placing all our JS files (to be loaded/executed) before the closing </body> tag?
I'm even more surprised because the author (in the same article) suggests to put his code before the closing </body> tag (see the "Script placement" section of the article), so he is basically loading the scripts before the closing </body> tag anyway. What's the need for his code then?
I'm confused, any help appreciated, thanks!
UPDATE
FYI Google Analytics is using similar non-blocking technique to load their tracking code:
<script type="text/javascript">
...
(function()
{
var ga = document.createElement('script');
ga.type = 'text/javascript';
ga.async = true;
ga.src = 'your-script-name-here.js';
var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); //why do they insert it before the 1st script instead of appending to body/head could be the hint for another question.
})();
</script>
</head>
Generally saying no. Even if scripts will be loaded after all the content of the page, loading and executing of the scripts will block the page. The reason for that is possibility of presence of write commands in your scripts.
However if all you want to achieve is the speed of loading page contents, the result of placing script tags right before </body> tag is the same as for creating script tags dynamically. The most significant difference is that when you load scripts in common static way they are executed one by one, in other words no parallel execution of script file (in old browsers the same true is for downloading of the script too).
If you want asynchonous scripts.
Use the (HTML5) async tag if it is availble in the browser you're in. This is what Google Analytics is doing in the code you posted (specifically the line ga.async = true MDN Link, scroll down for async).
However, this can cause your script to load at arbitrary times during the page load - which might be undesirable. It's worth asking yourself the following questions before choosing to use async.
Don't need user input? Then using the async attribute.
Need to respond to buttons or navigation? Then you need to put them at the top of the page (in head) and not use the async tag.
Async scripts run in any order, so if your script is depending on (say) jQuery, and jQuery is loaded in another tag, your script might run before the jQuery script does - resulting in errors.
Why don't people put things at the bottom of the body tag? If the script is taking enough time to load that it's slowing/pausing the load of the website, it's quite possible that that script is going to pause/hang the website after the website has loaded (expect different behaviour on different browsers) - making your website appear unresponsive (click on a button and nothing happens). In most cases this is not ideal, which is why the async attribute was invented.
Alternatively if your script is taking a long time to load - you might want to (after testing) minify and concatenate your script before sending it up to the server.
I recommend using require.js for minifying and concatenation, it's easy to get running and to use.
Minifying reduces the amount of data that needs to be downloaded.
Concatenating scripts reduces the number of "round-trips" to the server (for a far away server with 200ms ping, 5 requests takes 1 second).
One advantage of asynchronous loading (especially with something like the analytics snippet) is, at least if you would place it on the top, that it would be loaded as soon as possible without costing any time in rendering the page. So with analytics the chances to actually track a user before he leaves the page (maybe before the page was fully loaded) will be higher.
And the insertBefore is used instead of append, because if I remember correctly there was a bug (I think in some IE versions, see also link below theres something in the comments about that).
For me this link:
Async JS
was the most useful I found so far. Especially because it also brings up the issue, that even with googles analytic code the onload event will still be blocked (at least in some browsers). If you want this to not happen, better attach the function to the onload event.
For putting the asynchronous snippet on the bottom, that is actually explained in the link you posted. He seems to just do it to make sure that the DOM is completely loaded without using the onload event. So it may depend on what you're scripts are doing, if you're not manipulating the DOM there should be no reason for adding it on the bottom of body. Besides that, I personally would prefer adding it to the onload-event anyway.

What to use in place of $(document).ready();?

So I'm using jquery along with some plugins I wrote.
I do all the initialization in a $(document).ready(function(){}) block however this is executed when the whole DOM has been loaded and is ready to be used.
However that would take long eg. when there is a server load. Or maybe the user clicks a button that has been loaded while the rest of the page hasn't loaded yet (and thus document.ready() hasn't been executed yet) in which case it would do nothing.
So, what if I want a code to be executed right after the related part of the page has been loaded instead of waiting for the WHOLE page to be loaded?
I know placing inline code right after the html that this js operates on would do the trick but what if that code uses a library like jQuery that hasn't been loaded yet?
I know placing inline code right after the html that this js operates on would do the trick but what if that code uses a library like jQuery that hasn't been loaded yet?
That would be the only way. The HTML is parsed from top to bottom. So you can expect every script you included to be accesible after you included it.
Your page should still work without JavaScript anyway, so a user clicking a button extremely fast will just temporarily have a somewhat degraded experience.
That being said, the DOM is basically ready when the HTML document all scripts are loaded. Since you cannot execute meaningful JavaScript before the JavaScript code is loaded (duh), I'd have a close look at page performance. Sending an HTML document and 2,3 JavaScript files should not be slow.
You could also use the old-style inline event handlers, like <button onclick="registerButtonClickEvent()">. However, this would introduce a complex, potentially buggy and hardly testable layer of temporary event holding.
If your <script src="jquery-whatever.js> line precedes the first clickable element in your HTML, it is guaranteed that the jquery library will be loaded and run before the user has anything useful to click on.
Just don't add async or defer attributes to the script element.
The onload event isn't triggered from all html elements, so you're forced to wait for window load. It doesn't matter where you load jQuery since it will have to wait for document to be ready. That total time required to load jQuery plus the rest of the document will be thet same.

Browser loading strategy, <head>...<body>

I am inspecting some interesting behaviors of browser, I don't know it's in standard or not. If I put everythin inside <head></head>, the browser will only begin to render the page after all the resouces in head is retrieved.
So I am thinking that put as little as possible things into head is one of the important website optimization techniques, is it right? My question is:
If I put script/css in body or other parts of the html, how can I know that script has been loaded successfully so that I will not be calling a undefined function?
To answer shortly: You should really put the script tags at the very end of the <body> element. Style tags should be put in <head>, otherwise the document will have to be re-rendered every time a new stylesheet is loaded, so you really want them all to be loaded before the document starts rendering.
As for using javascript code that is not loaded yet. Of course you shouldn't bind any events or anything too early, and shouldn't have inline javascript in the page ideally. The solution can be to just use the window onload event to do your initialization, if you really must have inline code in the page.

Why are JS scripts usually place in the header of a document?

Why are JS scripts usually place in the header of a document? Is it required by standards, or is it just a convention with no particular reason?
See http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html#js_bottom
Although past practice has often been to place them in the header for the sake of centralizing scripts and styles (and the like), it is advisable now to place the scripts at the bottom to improve loading speed of the rest of the page.
To quote:
The problem caused by scripts is that they block parallel downloads. The HTTP/1.1 specification suggests that browsers download no more than two components in parallel per hostname. If you serve your images from multiple hostnames, you can get more than two downloads to occur in parallel. While a script is downloading, however, the browser won't start any other downloads, even on different hostnames.
In some situations it's not easy to move scripts to the bottom. If, for example, the script uses document.write to insert part of the page's content, it can't be moved lower in the page. There might also be scoping issues. In many cases, there are ways to workaround these situations.
An alternative suggestion that often comes up is to use deferred scripts. The DEFER attribute indicates that the script does not contain document.write, and is a clue to browsers that they can continue rendering. Unfortunately, Firefox doesn't support the DEFER attribute. In Internet Explorer, the script may be deferred, but not as much as desired. If a script can be deferred, it can also be moved to the bottom of the page. That will make your web pages load faster.
A <script src="url"></script> will
block the downloading of other page
components until the script has been
fetched, compiled, and executed. It is
better to call for the script as late
as possible, so that the loading of
images and other components will not
be delayed.
It depends on what the script is doing. If your code is wrapped in onLoad event then it doesn't matter since it will return almost immediately and not block otherwise you should put it where it fits because the placement does matter.
As for putting it at the end, it does give a little extra time for user to start looking at the page. Just ask yourself a question - does my site work without javascript? If it doesn't, then in my opinion it doesn't mater where you put it since onLoad code will only be executed when the DOM has been fully loaded (that includes binary content like images). If you can use it without javascript then put it at the end so that images can load faster.
Also note that most JS libraries use special code which works around the onLoad problem and uses custom event for this which gets fired once DOM has loaded and doesn't wait for binary data.
Now that I wrote all that, I got a question of my own. Does using say jQuery's
$(document).ready(function () {});
and putting the script tag at the end of page is the same as using onLoad event and putting it at the start?
It should be the same because browser would load all images before loading the script which is the last one in the list. If you know the answer leave a comment (I'm too lazy and it's too late to test it atm).
It's just a convention. It's usually recommended to put scripts at the end of the body so the page can display before loading them, which is always a plus. Also, document.body can't be used until the document is loaded or if you put the script in the body.

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