Javascript question

[Lissa]

If a web page - not one of mine - had a line of code that called the file "google-analytics.com/ga.js" and repeated that line of code 200 times, would it run that file 200 times each time the page loaded or does it know to only run a script once no matter how often it is listed?

[WhiteCrowNZ]

Does sound messy - I think generally with such a declaration it doesn't run the file 200 times, but there's no need for it and it's messy.

Usually with such a call, it's setting up a reference library, which isn't used until a related function is called.

Hope that helps - I'm not an expert in JS, but in comparable languages, it'd help to see the full line to know what it's doing with the line, I'm assuming it's a kind of library call. If it's however an OPEN FILE type call - yes indeed it would open it 200 times.

Still sounds very messy though.

[WhiteCrowNZ]

I know I'm saying messy a lot - I need coffee!

[Lissa]

The full section of code is -

<!--Google analytics tag-->

<SCRIPT type=text/javascript>
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</SCRIPT>

<SCRIPT src="http://www.google-analytics.com/ga.js" type=text/javascript></SCRIPT>

<SCRIPT type=text/javascript>
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("**********");
pageTracker._setDomainName("none");
pageTracker._setAllowLinker(true);
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}
</SCRIPT>
<!--Google analytics tag-->

</body>

The part in bold appears 199 times before the code continues.

[WhiteCrowNZ]

http://www.jsworkshop.com/articles/02scriptsrc.html

http://www.quirksmode.org/js/placejs.html

Right, reading through the lines, it says for each use of <SCRIPT> it will place all the code within the script. So all those itterations will possibly cause multiple downloads of that file at script run time, making the webpage larger in memory and slower than required.

As stated I believe it would be better to drop to 1 use of that script call.

[Lissa]

That's what I thought - it's on every page of our company intranet and it's running like a bollard. I needed confirmation before telling them they need to remove it. Javascript doesn't work well in our CITRIX environment anyway and adding a load of superfluous code isn't the answer.

Thanks hugely - I've had a quicker response from New Zealand than I got from upstairs. That's 2009 for you.

[WhiteCrowNZ]

Like I say I'm making a guestimate on that, but no-way is this a sensible thing.

Mind you ever turned and MS Office into a HTML page - it's full of junk!

[cullsoft]

Mind you ever turned and MS Office into a HTML page - it's full of junk!

Did that the first time I tried writing documents as HTML pages by just resaving them as Word files... wound up spending hours tearing out all the unnecessary formatting code to the point where I found it was easier to redo them all them from scratch as very basic HTML!