Meteor : add elements to the app.html - javascript

The sourcecode of the app.html in a meteor app will look like this :
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/846a8d9499cc559cd36226c07803f069a9b314a4.css">
<script type="text/javascript" src="/bd418141a43a911de5fcb0fc9eef1599abd72874.js"></script>
<title>application title</title>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>
This is simple and nice. (you can add meta in the head part).
But what if I want to add a loader for the app ?
I use a few libraries and my main js is probably going to weight a little more than one mo. I cannot image display nothing while it's loading.
The easier way would be to write a few line of classic inline html. But when I write something in the html, it's inclueded in my templates.
How would you change the app.html ?

Short answer: You can't. As far as I'm aware, Meteor will always send down an empty <body> tag and fill it in via templates.
If you have so much code that the concatenated JavaScript is quite heavy, you can split parts of it off. See this question for some techniques on how to do so. Personally I try to load from CDN any libraries that I'm using "out of the box," like Bootstrap (not an option for jQuery, unfortunately). To load from CDN, just include a <head> block in one of your HTML files and link to the CDN-hosted library files like normal, and leave them out of your project. Another option is to use jQuery's $.getScript() to load specific scripts on demand only on the pages that need them.
But that just lessons the load of your concatenated JavaScript file, it still doesn't really answer your question of having some HTML sent to the client immediately. To accomplish that, the only method I'm aware of is to have some other Web server in front of Meteor. For example have an Apache or Nginx server listening on port 80 that sends down a simple HTML file that has your initial content, and also loads the two Meteor-generated concatenated .js and .css files. Meteor would either replace the contents of <body> on load, or you would need to write some JavaScript to do so so that it gets "handed off" to Meteor so that Meteor can start rendering its templates there. I doubt the handoff would be very smooth, unfortunately. Alternatively if your initial page is more of a splash page, for example a simple login form, it could exist by itself served by Apache/Nginx and then on submit the user moves into the Meteor-served world. While the user is filling in the form the concatenated .css file (if not both the .css and .js files, or the .css file and any CDN-served or non-concatenated .js files) could be downloading in the background and getting cached. To be honest though I'm not sure it's worth all this effort, it adds a lot of complexity for what's probably only a very slight speed improvement (and even then, only on the initial load of the home page).

Related

Is it okay to have 1 .js file for each html page?

Can I write it like this? Won't I have issues in terms of how fast my website loads?
for index.html:
<html>
<body>
<script src="index.js"></script>
</body>
</html>
for about.html:
<html>
<body>
<script src="about.js"></script>
</body>
</html>
for contact.html:
<html>
<body>
<script src="contact.js"></script>
</body>
</html>
I just want to clear things up. Thanks in advance!
You should extract out common features among all the javascript code you run on different pages.
Imagine index.js has a function to create a list. And about.js has the same function. When it comes to updating that function you will want to change it in one place. Not the five pages you have.
As for speed if every page has a link for list.js file, it will only need to be downloaded by the browser once. It's code will be cached and used in all the other pages requested.
Yes you can use it like this way, your website load faster. But if you include all the JS to all the files, it'll load slower because loading time is increased coz all the three files load for all the three pages.
Or a different approach.
Try to convert all the three file into only 1 (This way you'll reduce the repetitive function)
Then include this file to each file.
By storing the file to cache memory, file only download (load) once then it'll be used from the cache memory. This way your speed will be increased.
Refer to the following link:
https://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/appcache/beginner/
Try to research as much as possible. You'll get your solutions.
Tick right (✓) if my answer is helpful for you.
The pages load separately so having a script in another page does not affect how fast the current one loads.
In my opinion, if you are very concerned about the speed it is more important to ensure that you are only loading the scripts that you need in the current page.
The right approach is to split your code into multiple functions as appropriate.
To address loading performance, use a minifier which will minify and bundle all your code (include JavaScript, CSS and HTML). You won't be able to outperform an actual minifier anyway.
Depending on the technology you are using, minification can be a step during your build/deployment procedure, or a plugin for your CMS which will minify and cache your files as they are being accessed.

Download css and js in one file (package)

I'm working on optimising a site and one of the biggest issues it has is that there are far too many resource requests.
JavaScript and CSS bundling and minification go a long way to improve this but they're somewhat at odds with transparent naming.
For example, if I have 3 widgets on my page that all have their own JS and CSS, I could bundle all the JS into one file and all the css into another file. this would reduce the round-trips from 6 to 2. However, the resulting bundle would be wasteful if another page only used one of those 3 widgets.
What I'd like to do is bundle all the JS AND CSS for a particular widget into a single file. The browser would then have to unpack this and make it available to the page. A logical extension to this would be to create a package of packages so that all the resource files for all the widgets were downloaded in a single file.
The only way I can think of doing this is with a web service and then writing the output directly to the document with JavaScript. This feels wrong as I don't think the browser would be cache this appropriately.
Any thoughts?
TL; DR
Has anyone come up with a way of packaging CSS and JS files into a single file to reduce round-trips to the server?
As somethinghere said, it is not a good idea to package both in a single file and send it to the client. A CSS cannot add JavaScript, but a JavaScript can be used to include CSS to the body. So the only way is to add the CSS as a single string variable and making document.createElement and appending it to the head.
If you are concerned about the HTTP requests, you can either embed the CSS fully inside the <head> or you can make use of Data URI Scheme. The downside of Data URI Scheme is that, the browsers IE 8 and below have less or no support.
Solution: It is a must and best to include three requests at a minimum, for:
The page itself
CSS Stylesheet
JavaScript Scripts
Other Solutions include adding the CSS and JavaScript contents directly inside the <head> or using the Data URI scheme.
Not sure but one hack is to create a html file and add your js and css in it and import that file in your original html file
something like this
<head>
<link rel="import" href="library.html">
</head>
and your library will look like this
<html><script>YOUR JS code</script><style>YOUR STYLES</style></html>

javascript segregation/performance in an ASP.NET MVC Application

We have an MVC 4 web application with a number of areas.
There is a main layout view that is used by all the pages on the site and it contains all of the CSS includes, the render body tag, then all the JavaScript libraries.
<head>
<link rel="stylesheet" media="screen" href="~/Content/jquery-ui-1.10.3.custom.min.css" />
..
</head
<body>
<div id="main-content">#RenderBody()</div>
<script type="text/javascript" src="~/Scripts/jquery-1.10.2.min.js"></script>
..
</body>
The JavaScript consists of common libraries such as jquery, jqueryui and plug-ins.
There is also a single JavaScript file that contains the custom code for the whole site
Since there is only 1 large JavaScript file with thousands of lines, code routines are initialized by checking for the existence of a particular DOM element to decide if it proceeds.
runExample = function() {
if ($(".Example").length > 0){
// execute code
}
}
..
runExample();
This is of course problematic since there is a great deal of script included for all files, while there is code that applies to all pages, most of the code only applies to certain areas or pages.
Is there a better way to split the JavaScript up for the site? Keep in mind it is the custom code that is conditional, not necessarily the plug ins
Even if there way a way to create a JavaScript file for each area, how
would that be referenced within the main layout?
Is it best to load the JavaScript include files at the end of the include file?
What is the effect of minification on performance and would it benefit the custom code file?
Any advice would be appreciated.
First, use bundling. Give BundleConfig.cs under the App_Start folder in your project a gander. By simply minifying and bundling all your JS together, it's sometimes inconsequential that certain code is not actually being used on the current page (the savings you gain from having one cached JS file that every page uses is sometimes better than loading a new different bit of JS on each page.)
If you need more fine grained control, you can use something like Require.js. You essentially write your JS in modules that depend on other modules to run (all of your plugins, jQuery, etc. become "modules" in this scenario). You'll need to manually minify and combine your JS as much as logically possible, but this will allow you to integrate various scripts together without having to worry about load order and missing dependencies.
As a side note, I would respectfully disagree with Kevin B. If maintainability dictates that your JS has to be in the head, I would say that's a symptom of a larger problem with your code design. The only good reason to add JS in the head is when it's essential that the JS be run before the page is rendered. A good example is Modernizr, which for one adds classes to the html element to allow you to specify different styles and such depending on whether certain features are available in the user's browser or in the case of IE, what version the user is running. Without loading in the head, your style would changed after page load leading to flashes of unstyled content and such. Other than situations like these, all JS should go before the closing body tag, as JS is blocking: the browser will completely stop what it's doing and all rendering of the page, and run the script completely before continuing. Too much of this in the head, and your users stare at a blank page for far too long.
Also all script (and CSS for that matter) should be minified. There's no good reason not to, and the difference in bytes the user has to download is often quite dramatic. Especially in this day and age of mobile-everything and far-too-limited data plans, every byte truly does count.

what is better to place the scripts on the _layout view or in each view

i am working on an asp.net MVC web application , currently i am managing the scripts as follow:-
1. i have placed the following scripts on the _layout view since they are used by most of the view (but of course not all the views):-
<script src="#Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery-1.6.2.min.js")" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="#Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery.unobtrusive-ajax.min.js")" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="#Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery-ui-1.8.14.min.js")" type="text/javascript"></script>
then i have added the other scripts to the related views themself if they need them.
so my question is if this approach will achive better performance since i am not going to load all the scripts on the _layout view?
Yes, this is best practice. But just be mindful, if you are using a certain script file in a majority of the Views, then I would place that in your _Layout.cshtml as well. Just because it isn't used in 100% of the Views, doesn't mean it isn't practical and advised to put it in your layout View.
If there are a few or two that uses are particular script, you are right: Just put it in that View. But remember by doing this you are repeating yourself, and it could potentionally be a maintenance nightmare if you need to update the script file name or path.
It's a gray area, but I'd be willing to say you are doing the right thing.
Place the scripts that all views are going to use in the _layout.cshtml file.
Then place specific scripts such as the validation ones in the respective views, even better in the Editor templates.
Better yet, use something like Cassette to combine all your scripts into a single .js file, this will make your website faster as the user has to cache a single file and serve a single file. Then you would serve this single .js file from the _layout.cshtml.
Cassette: http://getcassette.net/
SquishIt: http://www.codethinked.com/squishit-the-friendly-aspnet-javascript-and-css-squisher
I have a small article on using SquishIt with MVC3, though I prefer Cassette. Both provide similar functionality.
http://sergiotapia.com/2012/01/using-squishit-in-an-asp-net-mvc3-web-application/

Keeping my jQuery code away from the html files

I am learning jQuery and have a created several plug ins.
Unfortunately due to my company's coding practices they want all javascript code to be extract out to js files. This for me poses two challenges:
Can i extract the actual $(document).ready(..) call to a js file? So far with my limited knowledge I have not figured if this at all possible. If not, I welcome any suggestions to make this cleaner and more acceptable way to include this code.
There are too many javascript includes for each asp.net page header since I may be using several plugins. Is there a way to reduce the potential costly server trips that I would need to make each time I need these files?
Any suggestions, corrections are greatly appreciated
thanks
1. Absolutely.
Just add a script reference to your html like this:
<script type='text/javascript' src='js/yourfile.js'></script>
Then just start your .js file with
jQuery(function() {
foo;
...
bar;
});
or any other shortcut ways of starting the jQuery code block.
2. You should run your scripts through something like Minify before sending them off to the user. This will combine the files and pack them in nicely, so that they take up less space.
Using $(document).ready () in an external javascript file is fine - it will work exactly the same :) In fact - not only will it work, but it is good practice as it helps to seperate the content (HTML) from the behaviour (Javascript).
In response to your section question - you can combine all of your plugins into a single javascript file and link to that one inside the <head>. You could also try minifying the scripts, although this is normally a bit overkill until the site goes live.
When I use jQuery, I normally use this kind of structure:
<html>
<head>
<!-- html tags such as title, link, meta etc -->
<script type="text/javascript" src="/path/to/jquery.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="/path/to/plugin.js"></script>
<!-- more plugins included if required -->
</head>
<body>
<!-- html here -->
<!-- script is the last thing before the ending body tag (increases performance) -->
<script type="text/javascript" src="/path/to/your_jQuery_code.js"></script>
</body>
</html>
I think worrying about server trips for javascript includes is premature optimization. Do you have any evidence that these pages are loading slowly? The browser should be caching the javascript files.
If you do have evidence that this is a problem, you could
-combine the jquery code and any plugins into one file
-write an .net content handler to do this for you (probably overkill)
Then you can add a custom js file per page to handle page specific properties.
You can most definitely put your document.ready and all other JavaScript code in an external file.
Typically I have 2 calls - one for jQuery itself, and one minified global.js file that combines and minifies all of my individual files.
Personally, I like to use front end blender for this, but there are many other options available as well.
there's nothing wrong w/putting the document.ready call in an external file. in fact, it's what i do to separate my js from my html. if you're concerned about certain functions running on certain pages, you may sift through them with a
var path = window.location.pathname;
if (path == "/yourdir/yourpage.html") {
//do something for this page only
}
or you can just include certain files only on certain pages.

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