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I'm as geeked about jQuery's 1.3 release as the next developer. But I'm even more excited about the new API browser developed by Remy Sharp and available here.
For as long as I've been a jQuery user - going on 18 months now - I've been frustrated by the slow speed and sometimes intermittent availability of the jQuery documentation site. Now we've got a blazing-fast API browser that presents jQuery Core and jQuery UI side by side in the same cool interface. Better yet, it's available as an Adobe AIR app for offline viewing. Sweet!
I could quibble about the lack of bookmarkable URLs and the occasionally sparse documentation of corner cases. Instead, I'll just remain upbeat about this huge step in the right direction. No matter how intuitive jQuery's API, it's a powerful library whose roster of methods continues to grow. Nothing speeds up development faster than quick, persistent access to quality API documentation.
Topics: Adobe AIR, Ajax, Ajax library, Ajax toolkit, Javascript, jQuery
jQuery celebrated its third birthday Wednesday with the release of the brand-new 1.3 version. This latest release includes a bunch of cool new stuff which has already been discussed to death elsewhere. To me, however, the most interesting aspect of jQuery 1.3 is the movement of former plugin functionality to the core library.
Live events are a new twist on the venerable, and indispensable, Live Query plugin, while the upgraded, more granular effects queues were previously tackled by add-on authors. IMHO, this kind of migration is A Good Thing, providing greater parity with other core JavaScript and effects libraries (such as Scriptaculous's FX queue) while offering compelling feature differentiation (event binding throughout the full lifecycle of an Ajax page).
Topics: Ajax, Ajax library, Ajax toolkit, Javascript, jQuery, Scriptaculous