With a little bit of nice theming, the Fisheye component from Interface has been adapted to build a beautiful “CSS dock menu“. It’s currently making all the rounds on design blogs and on Digg.

Some more information about what this menu was designed for can be found on the developer’s site:

If you are a big Mac fan, you will love this CSS dock menu that I designed. It is using jQuery JavaScript library and Fisheye component from Interface and some of my icons. It comes with two dock styles – top and bottom. This CSS dock menu is perfect to add on to my WordPress iTheme. Here I will show you how to implement it to your web page.

Two new improvements have just gone into place to help improve the quality of the jQuery site.

The jQuery Mailing List is now hosted with Google Groups.

This move is going to help provide huge increases in the overall speed, and quality, of the jQuery mailing list. At the time of the move we were sending out, approximately, 4.5m emails per month. Unfortunately, the list was prone to folding under the high server load; and the amount of effort required to keep it performing nicely was simply too much to ignore.

The best feature of the new mailing list (besides the increased reliability) is the addition of Google Groups’ wonderful web-based interface. I hope that everyone who’s asked for a forum can now be content knowing that they can browse the jQuery list, and easily reply to posts, without ever having to subscribe to incoming messages.

Note: If you were a member of the old mailing list, you should be completely moved to the new one. All old messages and users were moved over, and everything should be intact.

Complete instructions on how to use the main discussion mailing list, and all the other jQuery mailing lists, can be found on here: jQuery Mailing Lists.

All code is now hosted with Amazon S3.

As a project, we’ve never discouraged first time users from using the jQuery Source Code straight from their personal site; it helps to get new users started with development, without having to worry about keeping their code up to date.

Needless to say, the number of users who’ve directly used the jQuery source directly from the jQuery site has increased dramatically in recent months (with some large-scale sites directly pulling from jQuery.com). This still isn’t a huge problem, but it’s something that the web server hosting jQuery.com shouldn’t have to worry about. For that reason, all jQuery source code has been moved to Amazon S3, for example: http://code.jquery.com/jquery-latest.js.

The jQuery site has been using the code directly from Amazon S3 for over two weeks now and I’ve been very pleased with the results. The number of files requested has dropped dramatically, giving the web server more time to serve the normal jQuery web pages.

Note: All old requests to http://jquery.com/src/… are being redirected to the http://code.jquery.com/… sub-domain (which is managed by Amazon).

A nice thing about this move is that we can soon start providing dedicated hosting for plugins. Once we figure out the logistics of the plugin repository (which is currently under development), we’ll be sure to make that a priority.

Additionally, static jQuery.com files (like stylesheets, images, and JavaScript files) are being hosted directly from Amazon S3 too (static.jquery.com). This is also helping to alleviate any strain on the server that may be present.

As always, if you get any errors on the jQuery site, please be sure to send a message to the mailing list, where we can find it and help to solve the problem.

1.1.3 News

All of these site issues have delayed jQuery 1.1.3 slightly, but now that they’re out of the way we should be back on track for having a 1.1.3 alpha out by the end of this week. This update is going to include significant updates to the performance of jQuery animations and huge speed increases to the selector engine; as well as fixing over 20 outstanding bugs. We hope to have an update concerning all of this, shortly.

Right now the annual SXSWi conference is happening in beautiful, sunny, Austin, Texas. Interestingly enough, there’s a ton of jQuery users here (as am I). I’ve already had the opportunity to talk with a number of you, but we should really do a proper get together.

As proposed by Luke Lutman, on the mailing list, and Cody Lindley (of Thickbox fame) – let’s do a meetup! Let’s say Monday (Mar 12th) at lunch. Meet at the main doors facing the Courtyard Hotel. If you have any troubles, feel free to give me a call at 585-615-5287 and I’ll direct you in.

I’m looking forward to meeting everyone!

See Also: http://upcoming.org/event/162778/

Update: Just to clarify, this is at 12:30pm (after the 11:30am-12:30pm session ends). And the doors are at the corner of Trinity and and Fourth St. I’ll be wearing a bright red Atari T-Shirt, so I should be easy to spot.

Translations: Italiano, français

The release of jQuery 1.1.2 is upon us! This is a another bug fix release. We’ve fixed a number of outstanding issues. The fixes have been tested well, so there shouldn’t be any regressions (knock on wood). The most noticeable issue that was resolved was related to animation flickers when doing a slideDown.

It is highly recommended that you upgrade.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns with new release, please feel free to discuss it on the jQuery Mailing List. If you think you’ve spotted a bug, please add it to the bug tracker.

Download

• Compressed JavaScript (Recommended Download!)
• Uncompressed JavaScript
• Full Release (jQuery, Test Suite, Documentation)
• Build Files (Compile your own version of jQuery 1.1.2)

Bug Fixes

The most important bug fixes, relevant to this release, are as follows:

1. Change: Event handlers (like element.onclick) are now removed when no more functions are bound to the event.
2. Fixed: DOM Manipulations for form elements.
3. Fixed: jQuery.isFunction to return false on nodes.
4. Fixed: jQuery.className.has, escaping regex characters in className (for metadata)
5. Fixed: an issue in IE where an event on a cloned element is fired during a .clone() inside of an event handler.
6. Fixed: IE ID selectors selecting by the name attribute.
7. Changed: Events are now internally stored in elem.$events rather than elem.events (due to a nasty bug relating to DOM 0 expandos).
8. Changed: .attr('href') is now consistent in all browsers.
9. Changed: @href is now consistent in all browsers.
10. Fixed: the slideDown flickering bug.
11. Fixed: Having a \r endline in $("...") caused a never-ending loop.
12. Fixed: IE6 AJAX memory leak
13. Fixed: bug in pushStack, reporting an element at [0] in a jQuery object with length 0

Documentation

Additionally, the documentation has been back-ported out of the wiki and into the API docs. All of the documentation resources have been updated in respect to the 1.1.2 release.

• Official Documentation:
  http://docs.jquery.com/
• API Browsers:
  http://jquery.bassistance.de/api-browser/
  http://jquery.com/api/

Leading up to jQuery 1.1.3…

This may seem like a fairly light bug fix release, but we’re gearing up to the release of jQuery 1.1.3. A number of outstanding bugs (about 5-10) require significant changes to how jQuery works, internally (specifically, in relation to events and animations). We want to make 100% certain that there are no regressions made to these important pieces of code.

We have patches nearly ready (animation is ready, events is in the works) – and when that’s the case, we’re going to release a preview of the 1.1.3 code so that everyone can test against it.

Update: This has also been announced on Learning jQuery: jQuery 1.1.2 Released

Update: A nasty glitch in Safari was found and fixed. We just re-tagged jQuery (it’s now SVN rev 1465 instead of 1460 – this includes a fix for the bug, and it temporarily disables the test suite in Safari) and all the jQuery 1.1.2 downloads should be updated, as well.

A new initiative has been forming, over the recent months, in an attempt to standardize the different Ajax and JavaScript codebases that exist. A number of corporate entities have come together to draft the new OpenAjax standard (including IBM, Adobe, Opera, and Mozilla).

Today we’re announcing a new plugin that you can use to make jQuery OpenAjax compliant. By doing this, jQuery is becoming one of the first projects that has made its codebase compliant with the new standard.

Currently, the requirements for compliance are, relatively, simple – but still quite important. The relevant rules can be summarized as such:

• All libraries must register themselves (their name, version, and namespace) with the main OpenAjax library.
• All libraries must register any global variables that they use (in the case of jQuery it’s ‘jQuery’, and optionally ‘$’ – it defaults to just including ‘jQuery’).
• Any attempt to register “onload” or “onunload” handlers must go through the OpenAjax library. In the case of jQuery, if you do: $(window).load(function), and OpenAjax is included, jQuery will defer to OpenAjax’s solution.
• Libraries must not disrupt the ability of other libraries to traverse the HTML DOM document.

You can view jQuery’s compliance results, to verify that it does, indeed, past the test suite.

If you wish to use jQuery in conjunction with other OpenAjax-capable libraries, the process is rather straight forward.

Step 1 Download a copy of the jQuery OpenAjax plugin to your server.

Step 2 Include the library in your site, just after you include jQuery.

<script src="jquery.js"></script>
<script src="jquery.openajax.js"></script>

Be sure to include both jQuery and the jQuery OpenAjax plugin after you’ve included the official OpenAjax library itself.

And that’s it! jQuery will now happily play with the OpenAjax core library.

It should be noted that, currently, jQuery is not part of the OpenAjax Alliance, but we’re in the process of applying and are eager to begin actively participating.

Today, we’re proud to announce that the jQuery Project and Jack Slocum’s Ext Project, have partnered to integrate the amazingly lightweight and powerful jQuery framework with Ext’s awesome UI library. This collaboration will greatly enhance the capabilities of both projects and expand the functionality available to developers using the jQuery JavaScript Library and the Ext UI component suite.

Specifically, the upcoming Ext 1.0 release will be able to run, natively, on the jQuery JavaScript Library. No other libraries will be required. The jQuery and Ext teams are actively working together to bring this integration to the Ext codebase.

Here’s some possible questions and answers (feel free to post any others that you have in the comments):

What prompted the collaboration?

Ext has some fantastic components – arguably, the best on the web. jQuery has all the core functionality to support what Ext has. The jQuery team contacted Jack Slocum with the hopes that we could work together to add jQuery support to the Ext library, and Jack whole-heartedly agreed. It’s a win-win situation: jQuery gets some awesome components, Ext gets a huge influx of new users.

What are the benefits for jQuery and Ext users?

jQuery users gain a huge number of expertly-designed components that they will be able to deploy immediately. Additionally, they’ll be able to use them in a manner that better suits the jQuery philosophy (e.g. being able to call Ext queries on sets of elements, chaining calls, leveraging jQuery’s support for true unobtrusive DOM scripting etc.)

At the same time, existing Ext users will gain the flexibility of being able to continue to use Ext’s professional-caliber components while leveraging the lightweight, small (~19k) and powerful jQuery framework.

How will the two teams work together?

After the first beta release of Ext 1.0, jQuery will be providing a
strike team which will work to iron out all the integration points in Ext. At the same time, Jack will be working to isolate all the remaining framework-specific code, making it easier for us to finish the conversion process. All of this will be in place for Ext’s final 1.0 release, which will support both Yahoo UI and jQuery.

How will support be handled?

The jQuery team will be providing support for any bugs that may only exist in the jQuery version of Ext.

Support for Ext, itself, will continue to be handled via the Ext forums. The Ext project will also begin offering a level of paid support for its corporate users.

What Ext features will be included in Ext 1.0 for jQuery

All available Ext 1.0 features are going to be supported by jQuery.

The final feature list, for Ext 1.0, is still being finalized but a full breadth of new functionality can be expected.

When will Ext 1.0 for jQuery be available?

The final release date still has yet to be finalized and we will make a formal announcement on the jQuery blog, the jQuery mailing list, the Ext project site, and the Ext forums once the its ready to go.

An alpha release of Ext 1.0 was just released, but does not, yet, include the jQuery compatibility layer.

Do any licensing issues exist?

No. jQuery’s licensing will remain the same, and Ext 1.0 will be completely open source (LGPL).

Additionally, corporations will be able to purchase an Ext support license. This will include email support and SVN access, amongst other features.

Update: Digg this story up!

Examples

Here are examples of what you can do with Ext. (All demos currently run on Yahoo UI, as the Ext 1.0 alpha release doesn’t support jQuery.)

Paged, Dynamic, Grids

Mixed Content Menus

Advanced Dialog Layout and Themes

Message Box Dialog

Drag-and-Drop Trees

A new screencast is up that takes an introductory look at using the Firebug Firefox Extension and jQuery together – combining the two to build a reusable bookmarklet that can manipulate Digg Posts and Comments.

The screencast is 14:39 Minutes long and 59MB, Click to watch:

If you enjoyed this screencast, don’t forget to Digg it up!

The bug fix release for 1.1 is now ready for all to use. There were a lot of weird behaviors that were discovered post-1.1 that needed to be remedied sooner, rather than later. If you were having any difficulties with the 1.1 release, please try this new release to see if your problems were solved.

It is highly recommended that you upgrade.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns with new release, please feel free to discuss it on the jQuery Mailing List. If you think you’ve spotted a bug, please add it to the bug tracker.

Download

• Compressed JavaScript (Recommended Download!)
• Uncompressed JavaScript
• Full Release (jQuery, Test Suite, Documentation)
• Build Files (Compile your own version of jQuery 1.1.1)

Every bug ever fixed with jQuery can be found on the main bug fixes list. The most important bug fixes, relevant to this release, are as follows:

1. Setting the numerical value of a css property failed, for example: .css(“opacity”,0.5) (also occurred with zIndex, fontWeight)
2. Calling $(…, jqobj) with a context of a jQuery object failed.
3. Accessing a property on an element that doesn’t exist caused an error, for example: $(“#foobar”).attr(“id”)
4. Calling .load() without a callback caused an error.
5. You couldn’t cancel an event that was triggered using .trigger() or .click() (for example).
6. .add()ing a single DOM element to a jQuery object was broken.
7. Passing in undefined values to a $.post() caused weird errors to occur.
8. Accessing child nodes within an example document didn’t work properly.
9. jQuery.isFunction() was unable to reliably determine a function, in a cross-browser way.
10. Triggering a .click() failed in IE.
11. Triggered click handlers were executed twice in most browsers.
12. A newline passed into $(“…”) caused Firefox to go into a never-ending loop.
13. Calling $.post() without any data caused an error.
14. Calling a descendant selector after a child selector caused strange results, for example: $(“ul > li ul”)
15. Triggered events did not occur if an event handler was not bound for that event.

The ever-popular, jQuery-based, Drag-and-Drop, Animation, and Widget library, Interface has just released version 1.1 to coincide with the release of jQuery 1.1.

A couple things to note about this release:

• The brand new animateClass, animateStyle, and animateColor handlers. You can now do an animation from one particular class, to another – and from one color, to another.
• The speed of droppables and sortables has been vastly improved.
• The documentation has been overhauled and is quite comprehensive now.
• The download area has been reworked, and is completely interactive.
• There’s a ton of demos to see. They’ve updated a bunch of the existing ones and added in some hot new ones, like: Color Picker, Image Cropper, Panorama View, and a Folder tree.

All-in-all, this is a fantastic release. If you haven’t taken the opportunity to check out Interface yet, I recommend that you do now.

Great news, everyone! Today is jQuery’s 1 Year “Birthday”! (I released it 1 year ago, today, at BarCamp New York City) In celebration, we’ve got a bunch of stuff for you to enjoy.

1) jQuery 1.1

This is a great release – tons of bug fixes, huge speed improvements, and a big simplification of the outstanding API. It is highly recommend that you upgrade to get all the benefits of this release.

Download Now:

• jQuery 1.1
• jQuery 1.1 Compressed
• jQuery 1.1 – All Code, Docs, and Tests
• jQuery 1.1 – Build Your Own Copy of jQuery

Upgrade Guide:

Please read through these guides before upgrading from 1.0.4 to 1.1 – a number of API changes have been made, and these guides detail how to work through them, and how to use the new jQuery 1.0 Compatibility Plugin to keep 1.0-style functionality in 1.1.

• English (Part 2)
• French
• Italian

New Features:

• By all of our counts, jQuery 1.1’s selectors are 10x-20x faster than those in jQuery 1.0.4. This should provide a noticable difference in your jQuery applications.
• Common selectors like div#id, div .class, td:nth-child(1), and div > div are all significantly faster. It’s a complete world of difference. Try them out and you’ll see.
• You can now pass in a function as a value for an attribute or a css property. The function is executed and its return value is set as the value for the property. For example:

  // 1.0 Code
  $("a").each(function(){
      $(this).attr("href", "/item/" + this.id);
  }).show();
  
  // 1.1 Code
  $("a").attr("href", function(){ return "/item/" + this.id; }).show();

• You can now unbind an event handler from within itself. This allows you to have event handlers that are only bound for a specific number of executions, for example:

  $("button").click(function(e){
      // Unbind the event handler if a specific form is hidden
      if ( $("#submitForm").is(":hidden") ) {
          $(this).unbind( e );
      }
  });

• Easily bind an event that will only occur once (this replaces the old .oneclick() functionality):

  // Show a thank you message for a form submission, but only once
  $("form").one("submit",function(){
      $("#thankyou").show();
  });

• You can now set the text value of an element (this is different from .html(), where in .text() all HTML is displayed as text).

  $("pre").text("<b>Hello</b>, how are you?");
  
  // Result:
  <pre>&lt;b&gt;Hello&lt;/b&gt;, how are you?</pre>

• You can now build your own filters, using a custom function. (This was in 1.0, but it wasn’t documented very well.)

  // Find all divs whose parent isn't hidden
  $("div").filter(function(){
    return $(this).parent(":hidden").length > 0;
  });

• You can now pass a comma-separated list of selectors to the following filter functions:
  filter, find, not, siblings, parents, children, next, prev. This allows you to do some very cool stuff:

  // Find all radio buttons, or checkboxes, in a form
  $("form input").filter(":radio, :checkbox");
  
  // Find the next element that's a span, or a div
  $(this).next("span, div");

2) Refreshed Web Site Design

The design of the jQuery web site has finally be given a much-needed facelift. This was planned out by the fantastic jQuery Design Team and implemented by Nate Cavanaugh. The design team has a full redesign/restructuring planned, but we wanted something that would help us get from our current design to the complete overhaul. Hope you enjoy it – and be sure to thank Nate, Bradley, or Skye for their job well done!

3) Overhauled Documentation

A big point that we’ve been working with, lately, was to really pull together and categorize the jQuery Documentation, Tutorials, and API into one centralized location. The result of this effort is the new:
http://docs.jquery.com/
All jQuery documentation can be found in this one, central, location – making it easier for you to find what you need and get your work done faster. We hope you enjoy this new structuring, please let us know if you have any suggestions for what we can add to make it better.

4) A Secret…

We’ve been holding this one back a while, but we’re finally ready to let it go… There’s a jQuery Book in the works! An excited publisher has stepped up, and the authors are already a quarter of the way complete. There’s still some details in the works, and we’re going to tell all once its getting nearer to completion, but right now it’s looking like we’re going to have a late-Spring/early-Summer release of the first jQuery book!

I hope you enjoy everything – a lot of time and effort has really gone into making this release great. Be sure to thank everyone on the jQuery Team, they’ve put a lot of time and effort into making this release come out really good.

I’ll be doing a “State of the Query” post tomorrow, to talk about where jQuery has come during this past year, and the evangelism team will be doing a couple blog posts about what you can do with the new jQuery 1.1.

Thank you, everyone, for making this a fantastic first year for jQuery.