excluding "jquery.js" slows page – workaround?

well, page score is not that important (it’s “just” a measure for how you follow best practices, real-life performance is much more relevant), but if you do want this fixed you’ll have to consider switching to a slider that does not overly relies on jquery, cfr. the advice given by AJ@wpfaster in this thread.

hope this helps,
frank

As a side note: Scores on best practices tools ≠ a website’s real world performance. As counterintuitive as it is, these are generally mutually exclusive things. Mentioned because of this thread’s title v. the reference to “page score” in your initial post, kmay.

Right, so jQuery and sliders in general and Slider Revolution in particular. Workaround: Load jQuery via Google instead of locally.

While loading jQuery from Google is technically still render blocking, it in effect is not, because millions upon millions of websites use Google’s jQuery.

What this means is that it is all but certain that a visitor to your website will already have jQuery cached in their browser, which means that that user’s browser won’t have to download jQuery at all. Voilà, jQuery no longer blocks rendering for the vast majority of your users whereas it would being served locally (i.e. from your server).

Cool, right?

How to: https://www.wpfaster.org/blog/when-and-how-to-load-jquery-from-googles-cdn

Be well,
AJ

Cool. Thank you both for the quick, thoughtful and most importantly HELPFUL replies! The theme I’m using has some inherit issues and the client has requirements that are slowing the site down, so I’m grasping at straws (every K counts!). I’m already using a plugin called “Use Google Libraries,” which does what you outlined AJ. I’m bookmarking that post so I don’t have to rely on a plugin for my next site!