What if you are displaying different elements based on the users location/country (eg. currency, contact details), and you use javascript to detect and do this.
You wouldn't want the page to load first and then this appear.
So you would delay the whole page just because of some location specific elements? How about render what you got first so the user has something to look at and then fill in your specific bits later?
Possibly. I am just saying that you might have things that are more important to do before the page loads that might warrant putting it in the head. It's not a set rule that javascript in the head is always bad, you just need to know the tradeoff and make a decision.
@jaffathecake I supplied a single example. Also, you might have a very javascripty web application that the users will have had the files cached 99.9% of the time so retrieving the files isn't an issue.
