It seems that jquery is the most popular javascript framework among web developers out there. This is not a bad thing, of course. The bad thing, or should I’ve said “practice”, is that almost all developers [need to] use their ‘own’ version of the library and they include it into their plugin/theme/application directories!
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not (currently) using it to code anything, but yesterday I thought it could be a good start to find the library and check its contents in order to start learning & using it. To my surprise, when I checked into my hard disk, I found 50 jquery.js files (not to mention the 364 jquery.*.js ones)! It looks like a waste of space and a source of possible incompatibilities to me, don’t you think so?
Just try this command in a terminal:
locate -i jquery | grep “jquery.js” | wc -l
or the ‘full’ version:
locate -i jquery | egrep “jquery.*.js” | wc -l
and see how many files it ‘ll report for your hard disk. If there are more than 10 (as in my case), I’d be worried.
I believe that all of that mess could be avoided if the developers used the Google-hosted versions of the library and avoided its inclusion into their directories.
On the other hand, if you are a developer and want to test your source files with a local version of the library, while providing the Google-API one to your visitors, you can use the is_me() [PHP function] to incorporate the appropriate jquery files.