What is the maximum size of JAVASCRIPT you would have on a page?
 

Lets say jquery?

how much size is to much where it slows down the page?
can you just upgrade your server to handle the load times?

i would think sites like facebook would have large load files for css/jquery but yet they will manage to be fast.

i want to have a good combination of features yet still have fast use ability. im looking to know if you can actually have best of both worlds.

i would test it against pingdom tool

minify = win...

If you have 500kb of code its obviously going to be slower than 100kb of code. The overall size of your Javascript code will depend on the quality of your coder and the library (or libraries) they chose to use.

Google Closure has a compiler that will compile a stand alone Javascript file that contains only the necessary code for your application. (This removes the need to load an entire library)

There are also tools such as minify to reduce file size and cache code.
http://code.google.com/p/minify/

amazing! thanks for the info i will have a look.

i always want my sites mint. there is no use in cutting any corners. if it costs the extra time and money it is worth it. that is the only way you can see true results.

If you want an idea of what to expect, just use Firebug. For example: The entire front page of Facebook (the main profile page after you login) is only 102kb of JS.

http://img337.imageshack.us/img337/4169/facebookjs.jpg

Pretty sure apache can compress js with gzip without any problems, might wanna look into that.