Just to let you know we’re not asleep at the switch around jQuery Central, we’ve got a new preview release of jQuery. It fixes the problems reported by the community since the original 1.7 release. Please test the code in your applications, making sure that there are no major problems. If you tried jQuery 1.7 and reported a bug, it should be fixed in this release.

You can get the code from the jQuery CDN:

• http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.7.1rc1.js
• http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.7.1rc1.min.js

You can help us by dropping that code into your existing application and letting us know that if anything no longer works. Please file a bug and be sure to mention that you’re testing against jQuery 1.7.1 RC1.

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!

jQuery 1.7.1 RC1 Change Log

The current change log of the 1.7.1 RC1 release.

Ajax

• #10723: jqXHR.always() returns a Promise instead of a jqXHR object

Attributes

• #10724: $(document).text() always returns an empty string
• #10773: removeAttr is fragile for edge cases

Build

• #10630: Fix focus-related test failures to resolve Swarm failures

Core

• #10616: Type coersion not done for -1 in .eq
• #10646: Have jQuery.error throw instanceof Error object
• #10682: Creating DOM elements with $(‘ ‘) leaks memory and skips the fragment cache
• #10687: jQuery calls the AMD define() global function too early
• #10690: isNumeric

Css

• #10733: remove uses of jQuery.each in css module in favor of a for loop

Data

• #10675: Use internalKey shortcut instead of jQuery.expando

Effects

• #10669: .animate() no longer animates percentage(%) width
• #10750: A “null” in the data object can cause an error in stop

Event

• #10676: wheelDelta not added to mousewheel event anymore
• #10701: Problems with submit forms using submit function
• #10704: special.handle method should fire under origType name
• #10705: off bug event name parser
• #10712: Triggering blur with live bind broken
• #10717: A triggered load bubbles up to window
• #10791: Delegated Events fail on SVG elements
• #10794: .triggerHandler should not .preventDefault()
• #10798: live(“submit”) and .submit() would cause unobtrusive ajax live to fire twice

Manipulation

• #10177: index of callback function in .wrap is always 0
• #10667: HTML5 Support in .wrapAll() does add a “:” to element
• #10670: rnoshimcache probably not constructed correctly
• #10812: passing empty object to .before() or .after() throws exception in IE7

Misc

• #10691: remove all occurrences of the “equals” and “same” function in the unit tests`

Support

• #10629: IE is much too sensitive concerning the fake body. Explore cleaning up support.js to avoid any future crashes

jQuery is more than five years old now! Over that time it has evolved along with the browsers, web sites, devices, developers, and users that it serves. It has also, um, grown quite a bit over that time. jQuery has added a lot of useful features, but it’s also accumulated cruft that we’d prefer not to support into perpetuity. It may not be an issue on a desktop PC with a high-speed connection, but we want jQuery to be a good solution for mobile devices as well.

Along with our continuing push for higher performance, our priority for upcoming versions is a smaller gzipped file size. It’s hard to do that when every new feature or bug fix must also preserve all existing features and behavior. So today, we want to start a conversation about slimming down the jQuery API by deprecating some features. Here are our guidelines for deprecation:

• We don’t believe the feature represents current best practice in the use of jQuery.
• The feature has proven unpopular, confusing, inefficient, or ineffective in actual use.
• It is not practical or feasible to enhance the feature or address its limitations.
• Removing it at some future time could yield notable usability, size, or performance benefits.

Deprecation is just the first step in a process that you can participate in. It is our goal to:

• Explain the reasons for deprecating a particular feature, as described above.
• Give at least one major-point-version, and often more, between deprecation and removal.
• Provide alternatives to deprecated features so that migration is not painful.
• Listen to community feedback regarding deprecation and removal.

Occasionally, as in the situation with event.layerX/layerY in version 1.7, we will make a breaking change with shorter notice if we judge that it will cause less pain to remove the feature immediately than to leave it in. Those will hopefully be rare exceptions.

Version 1.7 Deprecations

With those things in mind, we consider the following features to be deprecated as of version 1.7. Existing code that uses them continues to work, but the recommended alternatives are a better choice for compatibility with future versions.

.live() and .die(): We continue to get many bug reports and see user confusion regarding the quirks of the .live() method. Common issues are now documented on its updated API page. We strongly advise the use of .on() or .delegate() for new code, since they are better APIs. Given its widespread use it’s unlikely we will remove this API in 1.8, but please do update your code as soon as possible.

Non-standard event properties: As part of our push to improve event handler performance, we are also deprecating the copying of several event properties from the native event object to the jQuery event object and will remove them in 1.8: attrChange, attrName, relatedNode, and srcElement. Instead of accessing these through event.NAME you can access them via event.originalEvent.NAME where needed.

$.ajax() Deferred aliases: In version 1.5 we defined .error()/,success()/.complete() on the jqXHR object as aliases for the Deferred’s .fail()/.done()/.always() methods. Although that seemed like a good idea at the time, it makes jqXHR a non-standard Deferred. That’s not good. Whenever possible, use the deferred/promise method name in preference to the jqXHR one. We still have some work to do here to provide a full migration path, so we are likely to continue supporting the aliases past 1.8.

deferred.isResolved() and deferred.isRejected(): Now that Deferreds and Promises have progress notifications and a convenient .state() method, we are deprecating these older methods and will remove them in 1.8. Getting the state of an N-state object using N-1 Boolean methods is a cruel-code version of “Twenty Questions”. Deferred-based code rarely needs to inspect state, and the string returned now is more convenient for a debugging scenario where it’s often used.

.attr(“value”) on inputs: For backwards compatibility, we’ve been returning the current value here (as in “what is currently in the input box”) versus the real attribute (what the value attribute says in the HTML). That leaves us no way to provide the true attribute value, and is confusing since W3C selectors work on the attribute and not the current value. So we are deprecating this behavior and will remove it in 1.8. Always use the .val() method to get the current live value of an input element. Until we can reclaim the attribute, you can use $("selector")[0].getAttribute("value") except on IE 6/7 where that will still return the current value. (Our 1.8 solution will get the attribute value on all browsers and is another reason why we’re anxious to change this.)

.closest(Array) returning Array: This signature is a bit of a strange bird, it was created for use by the old live events code but it returns an Array rather than a jQuery object. As of 1.8 we plan to remove it. The other signatures of .closest() are here to stay and are not affected.

.data(“events”): jQuery stores its event-related data in a data object named (wait for it) events on each element. This is an internal data structure so in 1.8 this will be removed from the user data name space so it won’t conflict with items of the same name. jQuery’s event data can still be accessed via jQuery._data(element, "events") but be aware that this is an internal data structure that is undocumented and should not be modified.

$.sub() as a plugin: Although $.sub() can be useful for creating interference-free zones for plugins, it is not used by jQuery core and not widely used by other code, so we intend to transition it to a plugin in version 1.8 to save space.

Looking Towards jQuery 1.8

Given our push for a svelte jQuery, the filter for new features in 1.8 will be stringent. Even performance-related proposals need to be balanced against the space they use or save. Features that can be implemented via plugins, special events, attribute hooks, or other jQuery extension mechanisms are likely to stay outside core for now.

That brings up the question of what we could deprecate in 1.8 and eventually remove to simplify and streamline the library. Those things don’t have to totally disappear; they could move into a separate plugin, for example, and only be included when needed. Take a look at how you use jQuery, and talk about it with your colleagues.

Within a few weeks, we’ll be opening the call for your ideas concerning jQuery 1.8 with another blog post — so start thinking about it now!

Edit: No, we’re not removing IE6 support yet, and we can’t. As John Resig mentions at every jQuery Conference, most of the sins of IE6 are also visited upon IE7 and IE8, which together still have more than one-third of desktop browser market share. It doesn’t make sense to remove support for IE6 until we can whack IE7 and IE8 as well.

jQuery 1.7 is ready for download! You can get the code from the jQuery CDN:

• http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.7.js
• http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.7.min.js

This new release should also be available on the Google and Microsoft CDNs within a day or two.

Thanks to your help in testing and reporting bugs during the beta period, we believe we have a solid, stable release. If you do find problems, file a bug and be sure to choose jQuery 1.7 in the version selection. Also be sure to provide a jsFiddle test case so we can quickly analyze the problem.

What’s New in jQuery 1.7

The Version 1.7 tag at the API site is a great way to get up to speed with the new things in this release. Here’s a rundown of the big items in 1.7 and some things not yet mentioned in the API docs.

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

The new .on() and .off() APIs unify all the ways of attaching events to a document in jQuery — and they’re shorter to type!

$(elements).on( events [, selector] [, data] , handler );
$(elements).off( [ events ] [, selector] [, handler] );

When a selector is provided, .on() is similar to .delegate() in that it attaches a delegated event handler, filtered by the selector. When the selector is omitted or null the call is like .bind(). There is one ambiguous case: If the data argument is a string, you must provide either a selector string or null so that the data isn’t mistaken as a selector. Pass an object for data and you’ll never have to worry about special cases.

All the existing event binding methods (and their corresponding unbinding methods) are still there in 1.7, but we recommend that you use .on() for any new jQuery project where you know version 1.7 or higher is in use. Here are some examples of mapping between the old and new API calls:

$('a').bind('click', myHandler);
$('a').on('click', myHandler);

$('form').bind('submit', { val: 42 }, fn);
$('form').on('submit', { val: 42 }, fn);

$(window).unbind('scroll.myPlugin');
$(window).off('scroll.myPlugin');

$('.comment').delegate('a.add', 'click', addNew);
$('.comment').on('click', 'a.add', addNew);

$('.dialog').undelegate('a', 'click.myDlg');
$('.dialog').off('click.myDlg', 'a');

$('a').live('click', fn);
$(document).on('click', 'a', fn);

$('a').die('click');
$(document).off('click', 'a');

Improved Performance on Delegated Events

Event delegation has become increasingly important as size and complexity of pages grow. Application frameworks such as Backbone, JavaScriptMVC, and Sproutcore make heavy use of event delegation. With that in mind, jQuery 1.7 event handling was refactored with an eye to making delegated events much faster, especially for the most common cases.

To optimize the code for the most commonly used forms of selectors, we examined a cross-section of code from Google Codesearch. Nearly two-thirds of the selectors used in .live() and .delegate() method calls were in the form tag#id.class where one or more of tag, id, or class were used. By parsing those simple selectors in JavaScript at the time the event was attached, we were able to outperform even the browser’s native-code implementations of matchesSelector during event delivery. For more complex selectors we still use the Sizzle engine, so all existing code should continue to work.

The final result is that delegated events are delivered in about half the time they took in 1.6.4:

Better Support for HTML5 in IE6/7/8

Anyone who has tried to use the new HTML5 tags such as <section> has no doubt run across the problem that IE 6/7/8 not only don’t understand these tags, they actually remove them from the document. With jQuery 1.7 we built in support for using HTML5 tags in older IEs with methods like .html(). This support is on par with what previously required innerShiv. You must still include html5shiv (or Modernizr) in the head of your document in older IEs for HTML5 tag support. For more background, see The Story of the HTML5 Shiv.

Toggling Animations Work Intuitively

In previous versions of jQuery, toggling animations such as .slideToggle() or .fadeToggle() would not work properly when animations were stacked on each other and a previous animation was terminated with .stop(). This has been fixed in 1.7 so that the animation system remembers the elements’ initial values and resets them in the case where a toggled animation is terminated prematurely.

Asynchronous Module Definition (AMD)

jQuery now supports the AMD API. Note that jQuery 1.7 is not a script loader itself; it cooperates with AMD-compliant loaders such as RequireJS or curl.js so it can be loaded dynamically and the ready event can be controlled by the loader. Now an AMD-compliant loader can load an unmodified version of jQuery 1.7 from a CDN such as Google’s or Microsoft’s. Many thanks to James Burke (@jrburke) for submitting the patch and unit tests, then waiting patiently for us to incorporate it.

jQuery.Deferred

The jQuery.Deferred object has been extended with new progress handlers and notification methods that call those handlers. This allows you to asynchronously notify listeners of progress in a request without resolving or rejecting the request. In addition, there is a new state() method that returns the current state of the Deferred; it’s primarily useful for debugging.

Deferreds are now implemented using a new jQuery.Callbacks feature, a generalized way of queueing and triggering a series of handlers. This feature may be of interest to plugin writers, although Deferreds and the event subsystem provide a higher-level interface for this type of functionality.

jQuery.isNumeric()

Inside jQuery we’ve found several situations where we need to know if an argument is numeric, or would be successfully converted to a number if it is some other type. We decided to write and document jQuery.isNumeric() since it’s a useful utility. Pass it an argument of any type and it returns true or false as appropriate.

Removed Features

event.layerX and event.layerY: We have removed these non-standard properties in version 1.7. Although we normally would have gone through a deprecation notice period for these, Chrome version 16 generates a flood of console warning messages on the page. Because of this, we decided to remove them immediately. On platforms that still support these properties, they are available through event.originalEvent.layerX and event.originalEvent.layerY.

jQuery.isNaN(): This undocumented utility function has been removed. It was confusing because it appropriated the name of a built-in JavaScript function but did not have the same semantics. The new jQuery.isNumeric() serves a similar purpose, but has the benefit of being documented and supported. Despite jQuery.isNaN() being undocumented, several projects on Github were using it. We have contacted them and asked that they use jQuery.isNumeric() or some other solution.

jQuery.event.proxy(): This undocumented and deprecated method has been removed. Users should be calling the documented jQuery.proxy method instead.

The jQuery Team, and Your Part

I want to recognize the incredible work of our regular team contributors in getting this release out the door, especially Timmy Willison (timmywil on Github), Corey Frang (gnarf), Rick Waldron (rwldrn), and Julian Aubourg (jaubourg). Karl Swedberg (kswedberg) and Addy Osmani (addyosmani) worked hard on getting the new documentation into shape on the API site. Also, thanks to Mike Sherov (mikesherov), a greenhorn contributor who has already created patches for several tricky bugs. Many thanks to all the others who reported bugs, submitted pull requests, reviewed commits, and in other ways made sure we did the best job we possibly could.

Still, we can always use more help, and that is where you can contribute. The simplest and most important thing you can do is occasionally test our work-in-progress against your code and your expectations. It’s always located at http://code.jquery.com/jquery-git.js and a fresh copy is built each time a new commit is made to our master branch at github.com. If you find a bug in a final release, test against jquery-git.js to see if it’s already been fixed. It’s easy as pie since jsFiddle.net offers an option to test your code with the jquery-git.js file as “jQuery (edge)”.

If you’d like to do more, we’d be glad to have you pitch in! We’ve written a document that can get you started with the process, and one or more of us are generally available in the #jquery-dev channel on IRC if you need more help or information.

jQuery 1.7 Change Log

The current change log of the 1.7 release.

Ajax

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

Attributes

• #5479: removeAttr: remove multiple attributes
• #6743: map enctype to encoding, depending on browser
• #10176: Injected script tag is evaluated twice
• #10278: checkboxEl.attr(‘checked’) returns stale value after checkboxEl.click()
• #10429: IE7 – invalid procedure call or argument when calling removeAttr(‘contenteditable’);
• #10514: removeAttr does not remove the class attribute in IE6/7

Core

• #6485: Solution for HTML5 in IE
• #7102: Register jQuery as a CommonjS async module
• #9453: $.inArray does not support fromIndex
• #10478: Switch jQuery.isNaN to jQuery.isNumeric

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

Dimensions

• #9434: .outerWidth()/.outerHeight()/.innerWidth()/.innerHeight() should work on window and document

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
• #10445: Setting queue to true causes an error
• #10497: .stop should allow choosing which queue to stop
• #10622: .show() does not properly restore CSS-set “display” value

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
• #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
• #10375: Do not include `type` in jQuery.event.props
• #10438: Rename jQuery.event.propHooks => .fixHooks
• #10468: Remove deprecated jQuery.event.guid and jQuery.event.proxy
• #10489: Disconnected elements bubble to window on .trigger()
• #10531: Consider removing layerX and layerY from $.event.props
• #10563: jQuery.Event no longer contains the element that matched the selector in event delegation.
• #10567: Delegated events incorrectly match class names
• #10575: Breaking changes in live event propagation between 1.6.4 and 1.7rc1
• #10576: jQuery1.7rc1 and jQueryMobile1.0rc2 – IE gets error in jqm triggerCustomEvent method

Manipulation

• #6782: carefully allow more strings to use innerHTML
• #7037: Duplicate mouseover and mouseout events added to cloned element.
• #10501: HTML5 element “innerShiv” inconsistent across html()/append()

Misc

• #10420: MouseWheel
• #10553: Further reduction of minimal license header

Selector

• #3144: Inconsistent cross-browser results from .text() method
• #5637: Boolean (and Empty) Attribute Selectors Fail
• #6863: faster getText
• #7128: attribute selector is inconsistent between qSA and Sizzle due to use of DOM properties
• #8539: Sizzle cache collision in browsers without querySelectorAll
• #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
• #10562: siblings method returns unexpected elements when using Sizzle-invoking pseudo-selectors

Support

• #5145: jQuery.support.opacity = false in the Chrome browser
• #6809: