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.ui-1.5b4.zip

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

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

The jQuery UI Team is pleased to announce its first Worldwide Sprint, to take place next Friday and Saturday, March 14-15, 2008. Two full days of testing, fixes, documentation, and general getting-stuff-done. Our goal is to get the jQuery UI 1.5 release (alpha, beta) ready for final, and we invite any and all to help. Whether you have an hour, or an afternoon, come and run really fast with us.

How Will It Work?

We’ll all gather in IRC (#jquery-sprint on freenode) throughout the two-day sprint, with a couple of scheduled meetings to keep everyone on the same page, and make sure things keep moving. Other than that we’ll just be doing as much as we can, as fast as we can. Opening tickets, closing tickets, breaking stuff, fixing other things, and everyone’s favorite pastime: documentation.

I’m New Here. Can I Help?

Absolutely. If you’ve thought about contributing to jQuery or jQuery UI before, but never really found the right moment or momentum, this sprint is the perfect time to get involved. Paul and I will be around, as well other members of the jQuery Team to help people get started, especially if it’s your first time. We’ll help you help us, in whatever way you want. That could be testing, documentation, ticket triage, bug fixes, writing demos, or even just playing with new stuff as we churn it out, and providing valuable feedback. We want to ensure this release is rock solid on all supported browsers, including yours.

More Details

We’ve created a wiki page to help coordinate this big event. It has some more details on what is planned, how to jump in, and will be updated throughout the sprint to show status and next steps. We invite you to add your name to the page as a participant, if you’re interested, even if you have only a few hours (or aren’t sure how much time you’ll have). Also, feel free to specify what you’re willling and/or able to do. Thanks!

Hey everybody,

The jQuery team is proud to release the first beta release of the new upcoming version of UI, jQuery UI 1.5! It has been a long path to this release – originally intended to be a bugfix release, it was growing into something we just couldn’t call 1.0.1, not even 1.1, no, it’s so damn delicious we had to call it 1.5.

jQuery UI 1.5 is a complete overhaul of the library – many of the components have been completely rewritten from scratch to improve overall stability and performance, and we finally managed to settle on a unified API for all components. So let’s get straight to a list of all the changes:

Unified API

The API has been updated for all UI components. It should now be very easy to use other plugins if you’re familiar with one of them. There is only one exposed method for every plugin – All other methods are called by passing in a String into the exposed method, the initialization of the plugin works by giving on a options hash as first argument. You can now change and get all options at a later point if you want to by using the new data method. Basic example for draggables:


$(..).draggable({...}); //Initialize the draggable
$(..).draggable("disable"); //Disable the draggable
$(..).data("cursor.draggable", "move") //Change the cursor during drag to 'move'


Updated and revised documentation

The documentation in the jQuery Wiki has been completely updated to reflect the recent changes. We also made sure all callbacks and its arguments are documented this time.

Drag & Drop: Snapping, Relative dragging

Draggables and Droppables have been completely refactored. It might now be the most non-destructive drag & drop implementation ever: The css position’s value will not be changed except for ‘static’: That means that elements, that were static or relative, will not be forced into absolute positioning, which often destroyed layouts, especially when dealing with floats.

Some options have been renamed to better be recognized: preventionTimeout becomes delay, preventionDistance becomes distance.

Also, a new option plugin has been added: The snap plugin. Remember the docking Winamp windows? Yes, you can do that now with UI draggables – just set “snap” to a selector to select all elements you want to snap to and you’re ready to go. Of course, you can also configure it to your needs using snapTolerance and snapMode.

Slider: Ranges, multiple handles and accessibility

The slider wasn’t refactored, but has been completely rewritten from scratch. While it’s still almost backwards compatible, it’s now very stable and simpler than ever: The moveTo method now only takes two arguments: The value you want to move the handle to and optionally the index of the handle you want to move. Want to retrieve a specific handle value? No problem, just call $(..).slider(“value”, index) .

Even better, the slider now is completely keyboard accessible: You can now tab and focus each slider handle seperately and move its position using the left/right keys. We also improved support for using the mouse: Clicking into a empty area now moves the focused handle to the clicked position, regardless on how many handles you have.

For those of you searching for advanced usage, the slider now supports ranges: Just set the option “range” to true and make sure you have two handles, and the script will create a visible range between these two sliders that can be styled individually. The script even makes sure that you cannot create negative ranges.

Sortables: Connected sortables, serialization and more

Rewritten as well, the sortables now support a wide range of features you already know from draggables: cursor, zIndex, revert, opacity, axis, handles, containment and scrolling. Additional to that, you can now serialize your items to a url hash, and you now have the often requested ability to connect multiple sortables, so you can drag a node from one sortable to another.

and there’s more!

This is just an excerpt of the plugins I personally was involved in – the final release will come with an official changelog – but most of the other plugins have been refactored as well, with tons of new features in datepicker, tabs, accordion, resizables and more.

..and less!

Preparing for our sister library Enchant, we removed the magnifier and the shadow plugin and moved it to Enchant. Worry not, you can find them in our SVN trunk under trunk/fx. Additionally, the table sorter component has been removed because of API and roadmap incompabilities. There will soon be a grid component that includes most of its functionality.

…and countless bugfixes

We could have made it easy for us, just rewrite everything and delete all bug tickets of 1.0 because it’s not possible to track down anymore, but we did not: All issues coming in for the 1.0 release have been adressed and solved.

For everything that has changed in this release, please consult the documentation or look for it in the code. Remember this is a beta release – expect things to be buggy and unstable (but better than 1.0 :P ). Also, you would do us a great favor if you report any issues to our bug tracker.

Now go ahead and grab it here: http://ui.jquery.com or directly from our google code page: jquery.ui-1.5b.zip. For this release, we deactivated the downloader – so please download the zip package and include what you need. You can read about the dependancies in the documentation.

Thanks to all the contributors who made this release possible – I will thank each of you individually in the final release notes, I’m too lazy and too tired to do it twice :)

See you again in about two weeks!

We’re happy to announce a brand new release of jQuery. This is primarily a bug fix release for jQuery 1.2. You can view the full list of what was fixed on the bug tracker.

Downloading

jQuery 1.2.3:

• jQuery Minified (15kb with Gzipping)
• jQuery Packed (29kb)
• jQuery Regular (94kb)

If you wish to checkout the full release from the Subversion repository, you can do so by following the instructions and checking out the source from the following location:

svn co http://jqueryjs.googlecode.com/svn/tags/1.2.3

Important Changes

The primary purpose of this release was to fix a couple outstanding bugs from the jQuery 1.2.2 release. Specifically, this release is now compatible with Adobe AIR, will be included in Drupal 6, and will be the base for jQuery UI 1.5. Additionally, a couple minor features, for plugin developers, were included in this release.

.data() and .removeData()

These methods complement the, already included, jQuery.data and jQuery.removeData methods introduced in jQuery 1.2. The important change, however, is that they’ve been tailored for plugin developers. You can now namespace data additions – like you can with event binding/unbinding. For example:

  $("div").data("test", "original");
  $("div").data("test.plugin", "new data");
  alert( $("div").data("test") == "original" ); // true
  alert( $("div").data("test.plugin") == "new data" ); // true

Additionally, getting or setting data values can be overridden by a plugin. For example, the following code is from the, recently updated, draggables in jQuery UI:

  $(element).bind("setData.draggable", function(event, key, value){
     self.options[key] = value;
  }).bind("getData.draggable", function(event, key){
     return self.options[key];
  });

The above makes it such that all attempts to get and set draggable-namespaced data will be intercepted and handled by the plugin directly (rather than being bound directly to the element). The result is a powerful new interface for dealing with internalized data within a plugin.

.unbind(“.namespace”)

In jQuery 1.2 you could add and remove namespaced events, however you always had to include a name for the type of event being used. With this addition you can now remove all bound events that match a particular namespace, for example:

  $("div").bind("click.plugin", function(){});
  $("div").bind("mouseover.plugin", function(){});
  $("div").unbind(".plugin"); // All handlers removed

The above removes all bound event handlers that are within the “plugin” namespace.

.trigger(“click!”)

Finally, a new addition was included to allow exclusion of namespaced events from being triggered. For example:

  $("div").bind("click", function(){ alert("hello"); });
  $("div").bind("click.plugin", function(){ alert("goodbye"); });
  $("div").trigger("click!"); // alert("hello") only

The above only triggers the non-namespaced event handlers.

Alpha Release: jQuery UI 1.5 and jQuery Enchant 1.0

Last, but not least, we’re pleased to announce a new alpha release of jQuery UI. This is an overhaul of the existing code base with tons of a bug fixes and API tweaks. We need a ton of help testing this alpha, making sure that it’ll be rock-solid for the upcoming release candidate. Please participate in the discussion, helping us to get ready.

Additionally, we’re working on a new plugin called jQuery Enchant which will bring a ton of advanced effects to the library (like clip, shake, and explode – to name a few). This is an alpha release of this plugin, as well – so please help us test it and make sure that it’s completely up to the jQuery level of quality.

Download

• jQuery UI 1.5 (Alpha) (Requires jQuery 1.2.3 or higher)
• jQuery Enchant 1.0 (Alpha)

Demos

• jQuery UI 1.5 (Alpha)
• jQuery Enchant 1.0 (Alpha)

Enjoy!

Paul Bakaus (jQuery UI Lead) and John Resig (jQuery Lead) working on
the next release of jQuery UI (1.5) and jQuery Core (1.2.3).

It’s a rare treat, in distributed Open Source development, to be able to work face-to-face with a fellow developer. Paul is located in Germany, I in Boston – and much of the jQuery team is scattered around the globe. He stopped into town for the weekend so that we could make sure that all the necessary code was in jQuery core for the upcoming jQuery UI 1.5 release candidate. We also had a chance to discuss the future of jQuery UI and plan out some of the best resource allocations for the upcoming months.

All that being said, this next release is going to be fantastic. It’s what jQuery UI 1.0 should have been. It’s been rough because of all the constraints on developer time that were in place when we first set out with this project, but it’s been getting better. Paul now works on jQuery UI full-time – and Liferay is putting a ton of resources towards making sure that the future of the library will be successful. It’s really exciting to see this project grow up and start to see some light.

jQuery 1.2.3 should be released within the next couple days (after some more testing) and jQuery UI 1.5rc1 will be announced on the jQuery UI mailing list at about that time.

Reposted from my blog.

jQuery UI is growing, and I’m already seeing quite a few sites using it exclusively to support their interface. As a matter of fact, it’s growing so well, that a LA-based open-source company decided to hire a person to exclusively work on jQuery UI full-time.

I’m very happy to announce that I, Paul Bakaus, lead of jQuery UI, was hired by Liferay Inc., the company behind the world’s most popular open source java portal, to focus solely on bringing jQuery UI to a next level. This has an enormous effect to the whole project – I can now invest almost three times the amount of time and power, and I’m helping to deploy jQuery and jQuery UI in mission critical projects, which makes a huge difference.

Liferay’s plans are to standardize all their products to use jQuery and its plugins for the future (you’ll still be able to use other libraries at the same time) – it’s therefore in their very interest to see jQuery UI enjoying a long life, growing to meet expectations of all kinds of clients and beyond. To reach this goal, hiring me was the most logical decision: I now have no excuse not-to-focus on jQuery UI for a while – after all, it’s my day job!

But the cooperation with Liferay is even more than that: Liferay will be the first company starting from today to offer business critical support services for both jQuery and jQuery UI. Not only we’ll have a open source company backing us, but it’s the best publicity a project can have: jQuery UI will run in huge intranets, on every copy of Liferay. This will have a strong effect on both the distribution of the project and the level of quality that is being provided.

I myself am extremely excited about the change – there are countless positive side effects and products coming up – new products featuring jQuery, sponsored themes for UI, a new website, and of course – a new version of jQuery UI (the release date of the new, polished version with all the long-awaited bugfixes will be announced in the next couple of days).