Benefits vs. Pitfalls of hosting jQuery locally

Question

We're currently pulling jQuery and jQueryUI (and jQueryUI CSS) libraries from the google CDN. I like this because I can call google.load("jquery", "1");
and the latest jQuery 1.x.x will be used.

Now I am to pull the libraries locally because of security.

I'm happy to pull them locally but I'm wondering what are some of the other benefits and pitfalls to watch out for?

Answer 1

I always use the CDN (Content Delivery Network) from Google. But just in case it's offline:

<script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.2/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script>!window.jQuery && document.write('<script src="jquery-1.4.2.min.js"><\/script>')</script>

Grab Google CDN's jQuery and fallback to local if necessary

Edit: If you don't need to support IE6 and your site has partial https usage you can remove the http as well:

<script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.2/jquery.min.js"></script>