The jQuery Worldwide Sprint (see previous post) is over, and it was a wonderful momentum and great experience for many of us.
We made great use of the sprint wiki page during the sprint, and it now serves as a reference of what we accomplished, including meeting summaries and irc logs.
We moved a lot closer to jQuery UI 1.5, and we had 20+ people actively participating, working in one of four different groups:
Development Group
The dev group was solely focusing on the codebase of jQuery UI. They fixed more than 20 issues in our bugtracker, and implemented missing features such as the greedy option in Droppables. Additionally, we improved the core of UI in a very positive way: we got rid of two dependancies (jquery.dimensions.js and ui.mouse.js) and added one (ui.base.js). The impact was so great that even the core was changed: jQuery itself now includes useful methods from the Dimensions plugin (more on this in the upcoming blog post).
Test Group
The test group focused on writing and running a full suite of unit tests for each UI Plugin. This is critical, to ensure that all the features of each plugin are thoroughly tested in all supported browsers. The unit test coverage after the sprint is about 60%. Our goal is to have it in the high 90s before 1.5 final.
Demos Group
The demos group created a brilliant functional demo template and functional demos for many of our plugins. Also, many volunteers worked on stunning real-world examples that show how a specific plugin can be used in a real world scenario. All demos will flow into the new demo category on our upcoming website.
Documentation Group
The docs group had the pleasure of pouring over the documentation for each UI plugin, comparing to the source code, to unit tests, and demo pages. They wrote and updated to ensure correctness and clarity, for even an absolute newcomer to jQuery UI.
Thank you
So after all, we haven’t completely reached all of our goals, and we still have to work hard on fixing all issues still open. But we made huge progress that certainly wouldn’t have been possible without the combined power of all who helped. Not only this, but the Sprint was also a great way to introduce and motivate new people to join the UI project.
A big thanks to everyone who helped during the sprint and before the sprint – especially Richard Worth, who had the initial idea and made this event possible (he did all the hard stuff ;-) ), Eduardo Lundgren, who managed the demo group and worked insanely long hours during the sprint, and all the others who made huge contributions on both days.
But it’s not over until it’s over: We stll have to date 46 issues opened in our bugtracker until we are ready to roll out the final version of UI 1.5. Therefore, we are already thinking about a follow-up sprint. More on that soon here!
See you soon!
Paul Bakaus & the jQuery Team