dilemma over libraries and load times

[jamie]

hi,

we use jquery everywhere in the site. however we outsource our major sales engine to a company which uses prototype. the previous version of their sales engine was simple enough for me to convert all the code from prototype to jquery, so that our visitors don't have to load two libraries and to keep the same ui.

however the upgraded version of their software continues to use prototype and is now too complicated for either me or them to port to jquery without a lot of stress.

even gzipped and minified, this means that a visitor clicks on a buy now button and then has to load 150 kb of new js; and also has to deal with a slightly different ui (datepickers, dialogs, etc).

the thing is we really need the upgrade to keep step with the competition.

should i just bite the bullet and not worry about the extra load? or should i offer to help them port it to jquery? (yikes)

thanks for any inspiration :)

jamie

[enigma1]

Can they supply only the necessary sales part of javascript? It could be possible so the ui is from jquery and you don't have to port from scratch everything.

[jamie]

hi enigma, that's not a bad idea - keeping the code needing prototype to a minimum and loading jquery as well. visitors will already have cached jquery and the ui, so they'd only have to load prototype.

i'd have to look at naming conventions, so they play well together.

that is probably quite a workable solution. thanks for thoughts!