jQuery 1.7 Beta 1 Released

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If you hadn’t heard, jQuery Conference 2011 is taking place in Boston later this week. We’ve put together a little something we like to call jQuery 1.7 Beta 1 that we’ll be talking a lot more about at the conference. It’s got a lovely bunch of new features and significant bug fixes–more than 50 of them at last count.

You can get the beta from the jQuery CDN:

Please help us by dropping this code into your existing application and letting us know if anything no longer works. Please file a bug ticket and be sure to mention that you’re testing against jQuery 1.7 BETA 1.

Also be sure to explore all the new features and see if your favorite pet-peeve bug has been fixed. If you wait until the final release to do your testing it will be too late!

As always, we want to encourage everyone from the community to try and get involved in contributing back to jQuery core. We’ve set up a full page of information dedicated towards becoming more involved with the team. The team is here and ready to help you help us!

Oh, you probably want to know what changed, right? Addy Osmani has made a great start with his recent post, so let’s cover the stuff that isn’t on his list.

New Event APIs: .on() and .off()

Over time, jQuery has evolved three ways to attach events to elements: .bind() , .live(), and .delegate(). Underneath it all, though, the three event APIs call the browser’s event system; that can lead to surprising interactions. For example, $(document).unbind("click") will remove all .live("click", ...) events, since those delegated events are attached to document. (This is also why you should use event namespaces.)

Our current event APIs aren’t going away soon, but to address the inconsistencies we’ve introduced a new and simple pair of event methods that can do the work of all three: 

    $(elems).on(events, selector, data, fn);
    $(elems).off(events, selector, fn);

If a selector is provided, it’s a delegated event; otherwise it’s directly bound. All the features of the old APIs are there; for example events can be a space-separated string of event names and/or namespaces, or it can be an object where the keys are events and the values are event handler functions. Here are some examples of how the old methods map into the new ones:

Old API New API
$(elems).bind(events, fn) $(elems).on(events, fn)
$(elems).bind(events, { mydata: 42 }, fn) $(elems).on(events, { mydata: 42 }, fn)
$(elems).unbind(events, fn) $(elems).off(events, fn)
$(elems).delegate(selector, events, fn) $(elems).on(events, selector, fn)
$(elems).undelegate(selector, events, fn) $(elems).off(events, selector, fn)
$(selector).live(events, fn) $(document).on(events, selector, fn)
$(selector).die(events, fn) $(document).off(events, selector, fn)

Form Change and Submit Events in IE 6/7/8

These old Internet Explorer versions are likely to be haunting us for some time, so we’ve spent a while trying to improve their behavior. Event delivery performance has been greatly improved for them, but the biggest change is that we are using a different approach to fix their non-bubbling and broken form events. As a result we were able to greatly simplify and shorten the special events code. These events should work without any problems–even better than before, since we closed about a half-dozen related bugs–but please keep your eyes open for any unusual behavior.

Animation Improvements

Before version 1.7, if you stopped an animation before it completed it could create a situation where the element being animated would never return to its full size; it would essentially be stuck at the height that it was when the animation was stopped. We’ve fixed that by remembering the original dimensions before the animation starts so that they can be used later. This eliminates a major annoyance in using certain animations, particularly toggling ones.

.removeData() Enhancements

Addy mentioned this one as well, but the .removeData() API now lets you pass either a space-separated string of names or an array of names to be removed. Since spaces were previously allowed in data names, the code first checks for the exact name as you specified it before splitting the string on spaces. That way, no existing code should break as a result of this enhancement.

jQuery 1.7 BETA 1 Change Log

Here is a complete list of changes made for the 1.7 BETA 1 release.

Ajax

  • #9399: Deprecate jqXHR.success and jqXHR.error

Attributes

  • #5479: removeAttr: remove multiple attributes
  • #10278: checkboxEl.attr(‘checked’) returns stale value after checkboxEl.click()

Core

  • #6485: Solution for HTML5 in IE
  • #7102: Register jQuery as a CommonjS async module
  • #9453: $.inArray does not support fromIndex

Css

  • #10267: IE8 and window is(‘:visible’) crashes

Data

  • #7323: Allow removing multiple data keys at once with $.fn.removeData
  • #8909: $(element).data() will scan all attributes more than needed.
  • #8921: jQuery private data should stay private

Deferred

  • #8856: Request: deferred.isUnresolved()
  • #9033: try{ } finally{ } error in IE8
  • #9398: Proposal for Improved Deferreds

Effects

  • #5684: Effects: exception in animation callback causes endless loop
  • #6150: .stop sometimes doesn’t clear .delay
  • #6641: Calling stop() within animation finished callback causes other animations to freeze
  • #8685: Animations should keep track of animation state in order to properly address stacked animations
  • #9280: Allow multiple effect queues for animate()
  • #9548: animate does not work with fill-opacity css property for svg elements

Event

  • #3368: event.metaKey should be assigned to event.ctrlKey on Non-Mac only
  • #6170: jQuery(window).scroll(); causes IE* to scroll to 0,0
  • #6319: Regression: stopPropagation inside change handlers in IE is incorrectly applied to keydown event
  • #6386: support data argument for live events via “event.special.live.add”
  • #6593: IE8: DOM 0 event handler called twice when a separate handler is attached via jQuery
  • #6667: submit event doesn’t delegate in IE* under certain conditions
  • #6705: focus() causes focus event to be handled twice in IE8
  • #6903: special events need a way to determine whether they are being bound with .bind vs .live/.delegate
  • #6942: JQuery.event.fix causes unnecessary reflows in IE when handling key events
  • #7139: “hover” event alias should work for .bind as well as .live
  • #7161: Submit event on a form element not unbound properly in IE
  • #7444: Submitting form with “Enter” instead of button click on ie8 or ie7 triggers live submit event twice.
  • #8157: Focusing an already focused text field will prevent the change event from firing in IE
  • #8728: Event ‘mouseenter’ not firing when the element being left is removed on leaving
  • #8789: Meta: Event Property Hooks
  • #8858: Special events – _default method doesn’t have access to the `data` argument of the trigger method
  • #8866: IE8 input[type=file] delegated change event files only on blur
  • #8982: bind(“unload someOther”) => on unload, handler is not executed only once.
  • #9069: when hover over a child of an element, mouseleave fires when using live or delegate
  • #9279: delegate() bind does not handle mouseover/mouseout and mouseenter/mouseout correctly for selected elements
  • #9393: Unify and DRY out event system
  • #9593: Delegated submit event is not instanceof jQuery.Event in IE
  • #9724: Infinite loop in trigger function when window.parentNode is a DOM element
  • #9901: event.handleObj.namespace incorrect when using .delegate
  • #9933: jQuery.fn.toggle() should store state in private data object
  • #9951: Wrong order in .trigger() when DOM is modified in a handler

Manipulation

  • #6782: carefully allow more strings to use innerHTML
  • #7037: Duplicate mouseover and mouseout events added to cloned element.

Selector

  • #5637: Boolean (and Empty) Attribute Selectors Fail
  • #7128: attribute selector is inconsistent between qSA and Sizzle due to use of DOM properties
  • #9261: Has Attribute not working in filter/children/siblings
  • #9570: Selector $(‘form[name=”..”]’) returns zero elements in IE8 under some conditions
  • #10178: $(window).is(“a”) >> Uncaught TypeError: Cannot call method ‘toLowerCase’ of undefined
  • #10315: Sizzle ignores seed argument when using positional selectors

Support

  • #6809: Add jQuery.support.fixedPosition

23 thoughts on “jQuery 1.7 Beta 1 Released”

  1. Prestaul on said:

    I love the new event api! Should we expect to see delegation support come to event specific methods at some point?

    e.g. $(elements).click(selector, fn)

    It seems as though this would be backwards compatible.

  6. Someone on said:

    ” the .removeData() API now lets you pass either a space-separated string of names or an array of names to be removed. Since spaces were previously allowed in data names, the code first checks for the exact name as you specified it before splitting the string on spaces. That way, no existing code should break as a result of this enhancement.”

    What if you call removeData( ‘A B’) to make sure data that you may or may not have added earlier is no longer there? If the data is not there, tthat would become equivalent to” removeData(‘A’); removeData(‘B’)”, where it previously was not.

  10. Steve Calvert on said:

    Am I mistaken, or is the signature of .delegate in your event example not the same as the current signature?

    In your example, the signature you state for .delegate is this:

    (old API)
    $(elems).delegate(events, selector, fn)

    but in the current docs, the signature is:

    .delegate( selector, eventType, handler )

    It seems you have selector and event backwards. This would presumably make upgrading slightly more of a change than simply changing .delegate to .on

  11. Hristo on said:

    Do the new event APIs delegate every event to the ? I don’t have another explanation, as I see that all bind/delegate/live will be all changed to “on”.

  14. Shift on said:

    Small question … How to force this:

    function createSafeFragment( document ) {
    var nodeNames = (
    “abbr article aside audio canvas datalist details figcaption figure footer ” +
    “header hgroup mark meter nav output progress section summary time video”
    ).split( ” ” ),
    safeFrag = document.createDocumentFragment();

    if ( safeFrag.createElement ) {
    while ( nodeNames.length ) {
    safeFrag.createElement(
    nodeNames.pop()
    );
    }
    }
    return safeFrag;
    }

    ?

    I use a simple analog and want to entrust it to jQuery.

  18. wheresrhys on said:

    Just a thought – most of the tutorials linked to from the jQuery.com tutorials section are really old – the links haven’t changed since I started learning jQuery about 4 years ago. Up to now they’ve still been relevant as the jQuery API has been remarkably consistent over the years, but with the events API being deprecated maybe it’s time they got updated/directed to more up-to-date tutorials as they will actively be encouraging people to use the old API.

  19. Michael on said:

    I like the idea of having a unified approach to attaching event handlers. But how come the new method signatures can’t be added to bind and unbind? It doesn’t look like there would be clashes, and bind and unbind is a lot clearer than on and off.

  20. Abdul on said:

    since i learned in jquery about $(element).live i was not agree with binding them $(element) levelr, instead i was thinking to see it at $(document) level.
    thank you to make them at correct scope.
    i mean $(document).on(event, selector, fn);

  22. keshav on said:

    you are releasing versions too fast, if someone read jQuery 1 year before and try to use that method, then some of them are outdated.
    it seems good that we must be updated always.