Update: John Resig has uploaded the official vsdoc file for jQuery 1.3.1, the workaround posted below is obsolete. You can find the updated file

 at http://docs.jquery.com/Downloading_jQuery.

After the release of jQuery 1.3 earlier this month, those of you who have made use of the extended Visual Studio 2008 support for jQuery will no doubt have discovered the new version is not compatable with the 1.2.6 vsdoc.js file.

James Hart, has come to our rescue with the creation of a 1.3 compatible vsdoc.js file however it should be noted the structure for this file is different from the structure Microsoft used in the 1.2.6 file. As such there may be compatibility issues such as problems when working with extensions, just something to keep in mind.

There has not been any comment from Microsoft on an updated vsdoc file with 1.3 support.

• Get jQuery 1.3 intellisense support – http://www.infobasis.com/sandpit/jQuery-Intellisense/jQuery-vsdoc.js

This is indeed a momentous day for the jQuery team with three major announcements; The release of jQuery 1.3, “Sizzle” (the new css selector engine) and the launch of a new API Documentation browser.

jQuery 1.3

As previously mentioned the new release is mainly about performance which in my book is always good. I really appreciate projects that are willing to go back over their work and improve it for the better.

Most important in this new release is Sizzle, the new CSS selector engine but more on that in a bit. Also in this release is a rewritten event engine, rewritten HTML injection engine which makes appending HTML even faster and my favourite’, the complete removal of all browser sniffing which has been replaced by feature detection. So the lightweight and nippy jQuery just got even nippier!

Live Events are another new feature in 1.3, they allow a developer to attach events to current and future elements through event delegation.

The full 1.3 release notes can be found here

Sizzle – The new CSS selector engine

In 1.2.6, jQuery already had a very fast CSS selector engine, even noticably so when compared to Prototype 1.6 however the new ‘Sizzle’ engine has taken jQuery’s performance to an even greater height.

If you are a stickler for the numbers you can find them here

The big news with Sizzle it is a new standalone public project with an aim to bring together more creators developers to work on a unified selector engine.

More importantly, though, we’re taking a big leap with Sizzle: We’re releasing it as a completely standalone project to be collaborated upon by many library creators and developers. We saw an opportunity to give something back to not just the jQuery community but to the JavaScript development community as a whole; and at the same time be able to collaborate with developers of other libraries on a single, unified, selector engine. We feel that there’s too much competition and not enough collaboration occurring and so we put our code out on the line as a good first step towards working together.

In addition, Sizzle has been handed over to the DoJo Foundation;

As a sign of good faith and willingness to collaborate, we’ve turned over Sizzle to the Dojo Foundation (an excellent non-profit well suited for this project, not to be confused with the Dojo Toolkit). We wanted a common meeting ground where all developers would be able to work together and under which there would be a clear long-term copyright holder.

The Sizzle project can be found at http://sizzlejs.com/

New API Documentation Browser

Any project is only as good as it’s documentation in my book and this is one thing that jQuery has done well with, right from when I started using it in September 2007 and quite probably before.

Remy Sharp has taken the API documentation and moulded it into an even more impressive format, written in both jQuery and Adobe AIR. The new API browser can be found at http://api.jquery.com/ and really does work very well.

Having the option of downloading the API as a windows application really does appeal to me so kudos to Remy for the port to AIR.

So there you have it, lots of new activity in the jQuery arena, now if I could just get my hands on some promotional merchandise (t-shirts) I would be over the moon. Ah well, I guess today’s news will have to do

Oh, I should probably add that today, January 14th, is jQuery’s birthday, well 3rd birthday to be exact so Happy Birthday jQuery.

3 Posts in 24 hours, am I feeling OK?

The next major version of the popular javascript framework jQuery (1.3) is almost finished with just the last few bugs to be tracked down. John Resig, lead developer and creator of jQuery published the beta of jQuery 1.3 back in the middle of December and yesterday announced on his twitter feed that 1.3 RC1 was out although this was quickly followed with a mention that RC2 would be required due to last minute bugs. The expected release date of 1.3 is the 14th of January as indicated on the beta announcement blog post.

A summary of what’s new in 1.3:

• Selector Engine – The selector code has undergone a complete rewrite – it’s likely that some edge cases still exist here.
• DOM Manipulation (append/prepend/before/after) – This code has also undergone a large rewrite along with some of the logic for executing inline script elements.
• .offset() – Another method that has been completely rewritten.
• Event Namespaces – The logic for handling namespaced events has been completely rewritten.
• Event Triggering – When triggering an event the event now bubbles up the DOM – this is likely to cause some problems.

I have yet to have a play with the new version and indeed probably wont get the chance until it hits release but it is reassuring to see performance enhancements being implemented in this release as well as removing all browser sniffing code. I will add a little bit to my jQuery talk about the latest version.

Given how fast popularity for the jQuery JavaScript Framework has grown I figured collating a number of resources together would be a good idea. Feel free to post comments with more to add to the list. More to come soon.

The basics

• jQuery website – http://jquery.com
• jQuery Documentation (API, Getting Started, Tutorials, etc.) – http://docs.jquery.com
• [14/01/09] jQuery API Browser – http://api.jquery.com
• jQuery Bug Tracker – http://dev.jquery.com

UI

• jQuery UI (official UI plugins) - http://ui.jquery.com/

Plugins

• Plugin listings – http://plugins.jquery.com/
• Rounded corners – http://blue-anvil.com/archives/anti-aliased-rounded-corners-with-jquery

Development

• Visual Studio 2008 Intellisense support for jQuery – http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2008/11/21/jquery-intellisense-in-vs-2008.aspx

Nine years ago the World Wide Web Consortium’s working group for web accessibility issues, the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), produced a set of guidelines for web developers on how to build and publish content for disabled users.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) provide website authors and designers with a collection of best practice standards that should be applied to website development regardless of which user agent the end user views the final product with. The guidelines are aimed at promoting accessibility and generally improving web content for all users.

In the original specification (1.0) each guideline contained checkpoints and those checkpoints were assigned a priority. The checkpoints defined how the guideline should be implemented and the priority stated how important that particular checkpoint was.

• Priority 1 are checkpoints a web content developer must satisfy
• Priority 2 are checkpoints a web content developer should satisfy
• Priority 2 are checkpoints a web content developer may satisfy

In contrast to this, version 2.0 places each of the twelve guidelines into one of four principles which “provide the foundation for web accessibility”; perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. Each guideline has a number of “success criteria” which have levels (A, AA and AAA) associated with them which are used to indicate levels of conformance, similar to the priorities in the previous version.

In addition, all of the success criteria have two links from the document, the first provides methods for meeting the criteria and the second is background documentation for understanding the criteria or the guideline itself.

The WAI state that each success criteria is testable and has either a true or false result when applied to web content. This has caused a stir in the web development community and I can understand both sides of this coin however I do not want to comment quite yet on my opinion until I have had the time to study the final document in more detail.

I am strongly in favor of web standards and I think it is great to see WCAG 2.0 making it to the level of final publication. The question now remains, will the guidelines be followed? Time will tell.