Website MathJax

When I started working on this website, I decided to use MathJax to render mathematics. With many reservations, I decided to use the CDN instead of host it on my site. Since I used MathJax in the recent Color Library HSV Bug blog entry, I was reminded of the issue. Today, I put MathJax on my server and stopped using the CDN.

I would really like to use MathML, the mathematical markup language. It is a standard, and it really seems like something that browsers should support. Firefox supports it! Unfortunately, Google Chrome does not, which is quite disappointing.

Since the most popular web browser does not support mathematical markup, JavaScript libraries are used instead. MathJax is quite impressive. I prefer to minimize JavaScript, and the library is quite heavy, but it is my best option. Though I am not a fan of CDNs, I initially decided to use one because I was really unhappy about the idea of hosting such a big library on my minimal website. I have been thinking about going ahead and hosting it so that I can stop using the CDN from day one, however.

I was reminded of this issue when I used MathJax in the recent Color Library HSV Bug blog entry, and then yesterday there was a discussion on Hacker News about an old article that explains the reasons why CDNs are best avoided. This was a timely reminder! I went ahead and made the change this morning.

One of the benefits of the CDN is that I did not have to worry about installing security releases myself. Thankfully, MathJax creates releases on GitHub. I added the RSS/Atom feed to my feed reader so that I can quickly discover releases and update the website.