jQuery UI 1.5b4
Attention: We originally intended to release 1.5b3 a couple of hours ago, but we had two serious issues that forced use to deprecate it and go for b4. Sorry for the inconvenience.
The third and last beta has finally arrived to jQuery UI 1.5. Hundreds of hours went into fixing more than 50 bugs for this release – it’s all about stability. jQuery UI 1.5b4 is the last release before pushing out a release candidate – and with only 5 major bugs left, you can expect to see the next release in the next couple of days!
Although it’s mainly a stability release, we also introduced many new API helpers, removed the dimensions dependancy and made all plugins a bit smaller by introducing a generic widget factory into the core. Even better, performance of UI components firing events (i.e. “mousemove” in Draggables) was dramatically improved with recent changes in the jQuery core.
With the release candidate following right after this one, we will also push out a live test suite for everyone to use on any platform, helping us to track down issues, and fixing them for the final release. Yes, this means you an expect a stable, solid and performance-optimised 1.5 release this month!
Go grab the whole package (This package includes a custom build jQuery you’ll need, too):
jQuery Enchant becomes part of jQuery UI
After many weeks of discussions, I’m particulary happy to announce that the unreleased jQuery effects suite “Enchant”, earlier introduced as sister library to jQuery UI, is now a part of jQuery UI. With the 1.5b4 release, you’ll see a bunch of new files in the project’s folder!
The jQuery UI effects can be used standalone or together with UI and have a separate core, which extend the jQuery core to introduce easing, class transitions (morphing) and color animations. All further effects are tighly integrated into the main API and can be used as standalone ( $(..).effect() ) or directly from within jQuery methods you already know ( hide()/show() ).
There’s no documentation for the rich effect API at this point, but we’ll make sure it’s released before the final release of jQuery UI 1.5. In the meantime, feel free to start digging through the code – and watch more more blog posts discussing the new effects!
Overall, we have more than 15 ready-to-use effects for you to use in your projects, not only including everything you know from script.aculo.us (blind,bounce,drop,fold,slide …), but also fresh new effects (transfer, explode. clip, scale) for you to enjoy!
jQuery UI has a new home
I’m absolutely thrilled to announce that jQuery UI has finally found a new home at http://ui.jquery.com, along with brand new content, a new combined logo and a complete new design. After many weeks of iterations, we finally found the time to concentrate a bit on the website.
The new site features a complete new download builder already including effects, a real-world demo carousel, and a functional demo suite that makes it easy to see and try out UI examples and their syntax. Also planned for the next weeks is a theme section with directions on downloading UI themes and how to make them, and a tutorials section that will feature easy tutorials to easily learn controlling UI widgets.
A big thanks and kudos goes to Liferay’s Art Director Brian Miller, who did a great job and invested countless hours to achieve this beautiful design!
See you soon!
Paul Bakaus and the jQuery UI Team