Why use @Scripts.Render(“~/bundles/jquery”)

Bundling is all about compressing several JavaScript or stylesheets files without any formatting (also referred as minified) into a single file for saving bandwith and number of requests to load a page.

As example you could create your own bundle:

bundles.Add(New ScriptBundle("https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12192646/~/bundles/mybundle").Include(
            "~/Resources/Core/Javascripts/jquery-1.7.1.min.js",
            "~/Resources/Core/Javascripts/jquery-ui-1.8.16.min.js",
            "~/Resources/Core/Javascripts/jquery.validate.min.js",
            "~/Resources/Core/Javascripts/jquery.validate.unobtrusive.min.js",
            "~/Resources/Core/Javascripts/jquery.unobtrusive-ajax.min.js",
            "~/Resources/Core/Javascripts/jquery-ui-timepicker-addon.js"))

And render it like this:

@Scripts.Render("https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12192646/~/bundles/mybundle")

One more advantage of @Scripts.Render("https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12192646/~/bundles/mybundle") over the native <script src="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12192646/~/bundles/mybundle" /> is that @Scripts.Render() will respect the web.config debug setting:

  <system.web>
    <compilation debug="true|false" />

If debug="true" then it will instead render individual script tags for each source script, without any minification.

For stylesheets you will have to use a StyleBundle and @Styles.Render().

Instead of loading each script or style with a single request (with script or link tags), all files are compressed into a single JavaScript or stylesheet file and loaded together.