This new release boasts an 800% speed improvement with a number of its selectors along with various enhancements across the board! The selector speed boost makes me one happy camper. Check out the enhancements as it compares to 1.1.2:

And here’s how it now stacks up against the SlickSpeed test:

In addition to the speed enhancements, there were several other notable things:

• Unicode Selectors: Yup…now you can use fancy non-english characters.
• Escape Selectors: This is awesome. Now, if you use weird characters (i.e. punctuation) in a class/id name, you can now escape those characters within the selector syntax. E.g. $(“div#foo\.bar”)
• Inequality Selector: You can now select elements where their attributes do not match a specific string of characters. E.g. $(“div[@id!=test]“)
• :nth-child() improvements: jQuery has supported selectors like :nth-child(1) and :nth-child(odd) since the beginning of jQuery, now they’ve added advanced :nth-child selectors, such as:
  • $(“div:nth-child(2n)”)
  • $(“div:nth-child(2n+1)”)
  • $(“div:nth-child(n)”)
• Space-separated attributes: After being removed in jQuery 1.0, this selector has now been brought back by popular demand. It allows you to locate individual items in a space-separated attribute (such as a class or rel attribute). E.g. $(“a[@rel~=test]“)
• Animation Improvements: Animations are now significantly faster and smoother. Additionally, you can run more simultaneous animations without incurring any speed hits.
• DOM Event Listeners: Internally, the jQuery Event system has been overhauled to use the DOM Event system, rather than the classical “onclick” style of binding event handlers. This improvement allows you to be more unobtrusive in your use of the library (not affecting the flow of other libraries around it). Additionally, it helped to resolve some of the outstanding issues that existed with binding event listeners to IFrames.
• Event Normalization: Some great steps have been taken to normalize keyboard and mouse events. You can now access the event.which property to get most details about the specific key or button that was pressed.
• Multiple .is(): The .is() method can now take multiple selectors, separated by a comma. This allows you to test your jQuery set against multiple selectors. E.g. $(“div”).is(“:visible, :first”)
• Browser Version: A commonly requested feature, by plugin authors, was a way to determine what browser version their users were using. We now expose an extra property through which this information can be accessed. E.g. jQuery.browser.version

Additionally, the jQuery team has addressed 80+ bugs and has roadmapped out the next two releases (v1.1.4 and v1.2). To check out the full jQuery 1.2 roadmap, go here.

EatPoopUCat is the name of the game. Funny name? Yeah, well this game goes by many. You may know this game as: Fax Machine; The Paper Game; Pictophone; The Picture Sentence Game; The Sentence Game; Paper Telephone; Sentence Picture; Telephone Pictionary; Descriptionary; Writesy Drawsy; Cricket Cricket I’m On Fire; or Moneyduck.

The game works like so: Someone comes up with a sentence or phrase. That phrase goes to another person who draws a picture of the phrase. That picture goes to the next person who writes a phrase to the picture (without seeing the first phrase). Rinse and repeat. The web-based game works the same, you type a phrase in a box and hit submit, or you draw right on the site or upload a picture from your compy. Easy as that! Here’s an example result of a game I participated in:

Phrase 1:For your children, go straight to the wall and jump it like a gazelle

Phrase 2: It was a bright sunny day and kids were playing in the frontyard

Phrase 3: Outside the bar, Phil was roughed up by some plug-uglies who beaned him in the head with a volleyball.

Phrase 4: If the beer and power cords don’t get you, the low flying soccer balls surely will.

Final Phrase:He has 3 choises: Drink 2 Beers, throw Frisbee-pizzas or be a human bridge for the electricity.

It’s pretty cool how the phrases/pictures change as it gets passed from person to person. In addition to the ability to do the above, each ‘story’ can be commented on and rated. Plus, for pictures or interpretations you can give “kudos” to the author/artist. Oh! And as you participate in different threads, you can keep tabs on the statuses of those strips that you have done.

Lastly, for those of you that are Web 2.0 geeks, the site is Ajaxified with a combination of Google Web Toolkit, Amazon S3, and Amazon EC2, along with an in browser drawing utility that uses the Canvas element. Pretty snazzy. I’ve already wasted a great deal of time in the evenings on this site and many more to come!

The “Quick and Dirty” on v1.1:

• Its selectors are 10-20x faster than those in jQuery 1.0.4.
• The documentation has been completely revamped.
• The complexity of the API has dropped by 47%.
• It has a ton of bug fixes.
• It has a bunch of great new features.
• … and it’s still the small 19KB that you’ve come to expect.

With this release come a lot of API changes:

Firstly, :nth-child() now starts at 1, instead of 0.

A number of methods have been re-organized/re-named. Here’s the translation of old to new functions:

What’s more? Well, the jQuery team will be posting throughout the week on all the cool new things you can do with jQuery 1.1. I’m looking forward to seeing the changes! Oh, with regards to changes, its important to note with that list of functions above…the old method will no longer work come v1.1. To keep those functions in use, a ‘helper’ library will need to be used…chances are that won’t be available until the 1.1 final.

• Tons of bug fixes (Full List)
• Extensions to $.ajax(): $.ajax accepts additional options: beforeSend, async and processData; returns XMLHttpRequest to allow manual aborting of requests, see docs for details.

  Example: Add extra headers to an Ajax request using beforeSend

  $.ajax({
    type: "POST",
    url: "/files/add/",
    beforeSend: function(xhr) {
      xhr.setRequestHeader( "Content-type", "text/plain" );
    },
    data: "This is the contents of my text file."
  });

  Example: Perform a synchronous Ajax request.

  // Get the HTML of a web page and save it
  // to a variable (the browser will freeze until the
  // entire request is completed).
  var html = $.ajax({
    type: "GET",
    url: "test.html",
    async: false
  }).responseText;
  
  // Add the HTML into the page
  $("#list").html( html );

  Example: Sending a JavaScript object using processData.

  // The data to send to the server
  var params = {
    name: "John",
    city: "Boston"
  };
  
  $.ajax({
    type: "POST",
    url: "/user/add/",
    processData: params
  });

  Example: Aborting an Ajax request after a specific delay in time.

  // Perform a simple Ajax request
  var req = $.ajax({
    type: "GET",
    url: "/user/list/",
    success: function(data) {
      // Do something with the data...
      // Then remove the request.
      req = null;
    }
  });
  
  // Wait for 5 seconds
  setTimeout(function(){
    // If the request is still running, abort it.
    if ( req ) req.abort();
  }, 5000);

• AJAX module: The public $.ajax API is now used internally (for $.get/$.post etc.); loading scripts works now much more reliably in all browsers (with the exception of Safari, which is a work in progress).
• New global Ajax handler: ajaxSend – called before an Ajax request is sent.

  Example: Add extra headers to all Ajax requests using the ajaxSend event.

  $(document).ajaxSend(function(xhr){
    xhr.setRequestHeader("X-Web-Request", "MySite.com");
  });

• Extensions to global Ajax handlers: ajaxSend, ajaxSuccess, ajaxError and ajaxComplete get XMLHttpRequest and settings passed as arguments.

  Example: Prevent any POST requests that are sending too much data.

  $(document).ajaxSend(function(xhr,options){
    if ( options.type == "POST" && options.data.length > 1024 )
      xhr.abort();
  });

  Example: Show a special message for requests submitted using an Ajax POST.

  $("#dataSent").ajaxSend(function(xhr,options){
    if ( options.type == "POST" )
      $(this).show();
  });

• Extensions to event handling: pageX and pageY are available in all browsers now. (IE does not provide native pageX/Y).

  Example: Have a tooltip follow a user’s mouse around the page.

  $(document).mousemove(function(e){
    $("#mousetip").css({
      top: e.pageY + "px",
      left: e.pageX + "px"
    });
  });

• Improved docs: $(String) method has now two separate descriptions, one for selecting elements, one for creating html on-the-fly.
• FX module: Most inline styles added by animations are now removed when the animation is complete, eg. height style when animating height (exception: display styles).

I’ll be using Visual jQuery to explore to toolkit and see what it has to offer and using the JQuery API for quick syntax lookup.

Oh, and on a side note, the people over at Visual jQuery have begun a jQuery magazine in pdf format…pretty neat-o.

John’s presentation was less of a presentation and more of a Q&A Demonstration, which suited me fine. As soon as I knew where to download the code, I popped open my laptop and started fiddling around with the toolkit – passively paying attention to the questions and answers, as they tended to be extremely basic questions…you see, jQuery is pretty darn intuitive.

jQuery’s mantra is “Find stuff and do stuff to it”

Yeah, I wasn’t converted because jQuery was the first toolkit to support chaining and that it executes it nicely. Nor was I converted because of its extensive plugin library. Nope. My conversion was the effecient findability of elements within the DOM! This is what really makes jQuery ballsy. The toolkit was built with findability in mind using already established standards! jQuery fully supports CSS1, CSS2, CSS3, and basic XPath when hunting for elements. For example:

Lets start with something simple:
Say I wanted to find all elements within the page that had the class: bork and hide them, I’d do:

$('.bork').hide();

Alright, say I wanted to find all anchor tags with the target set to _blank and add the class whee to it:

$('a[@target=_blank]').addClass('whee');

Now, lets say I want to find all anchor tags with the target set to _blank and add the class whee to them AND append (opens in a new window) as a sibling to the link itself.

$('a[@target=_blank]').each(
  function(){
    $(this).addClass('whee');
    $(this).after('(Opens in a new window)');
  }
);

Now, if I knew I was going to use the above a whole lot all over hell’s half acre, I could create a jQuery plugin that can be chained! Here’s how I’d create that feature and allow for the passing of class name:

jQuery.fn.opensInNewWindow = function(classname){
	return this.each(
		function(){
                        $(this).addClass(classname);
                        $(this).after('(Opens in a new window)');
		}
	);
};

Now, when I want to put Opens in a new window on a series of elements, I can do so with my newly created plugin:

$('a[@target=_blank]').opensInNewWindow('whee');

//I can do this for ANY element I want even if it isn't a link
$('span.bork').opensInNewWindow('zomg');
$('div#w00t ul.nav').opensInNewWindow('roflcopter');

Now, to make use of the chainability, you can write the plugin more simply than what I did up above. You can do this: (thanks to malsup, a commenter on this article)

jQuery.fn.opensInNewWindow = function(classname){
	return this.each(
		function(){
      $(this).addClass(classname).after('(Opens in a new window)');
		}
	);
};

Cake walk. As your proficiency in finding objects within a page increases, your code will become shorter.

jQuery currently has a very active community and mailing list (averaging at about 90 posts per day) so if you have questions regarding the toolkit, you can become a member and ask away… In addition, there’s a jQuery blog where John posts comparison code showing the difference between jQuery and other available toolkits. (here’s a Zebra striping example)

If you are still on the hunt for a JavaScript toolkit for Ajax, DOM manipulation, etc or you find your toolkit of choice too clunky, give jQuery a shot. You’ll be pleased with the results.

Despite the fact that AJAX is making significant inroads within the Web 2.0 community, many enterprise applications still remain either traditional web or desktop applications. However, by effectively using AJAX, enterprises can develop compelling, innovative, and useful web based applications that increase employee productivity while retaining the manageability enjoyed by traditional web applications. This session will focus on the challenges of developing enterprise AJAX applications with an emphasis on overcoming the common hurdles and problems encountered along the way.

Presenter: Conrad Damon – Zimbra

Conrad’s discussion began with an re-iteration of what Web 2.0 is and how things have changed since Web 1.0. Old news, but the re-iteration was brief.

Choosing an RIA solution

Next Conrad explained his team’s decision process on choosing Ajax as the solution for creating their Rich Internet Application, Zimbra.

Flash?
The Zimbra team turned this down early on as they didn’t want to be tied to a proprietary solution… A decision I can respect :) I’m not too keen on the use of Flash as a front end for full-blown RIAs in most cases.

Ajax Worries
There were some hesitations regarding the use of Ajax as a solution:

• Complexity – Lets face it, adding Ajax into the mix causes the applications complexity to increase.
• Performance – there’s a lot going on with an Ajax app client-side that can cause client performance to degrade. (mixed with the chattiness server-side)
• Some cross-browser issues.

Ajax: The Chosen One
Overall, Zimbra’s team decided on Ajax as the pros outweighed the cons:

• Enhanced User Experience
• Desktop application-like feel.
• Deployment is trivial. – No installation…the application is accessible via the web.
• The power of mashups is where its at. Its all about SOA (Service Oriented Architecture).

Ajax Points

Conrad noted a few key points regarding Ajax, however:

• Ajax is cheaper on the server/network
• Ajax applications are more memory expensive client-side
• Ajax applications are not a business model
• Ajax applications are the means not an end

Ajax Tips

Based on the Zimbra team’s experience, Conrad gave some tips:

• Use an Ajax Toolkit – They simplify things. What you choose is up to you, but the time saved by toolkit use is well worth it.
• CSS is your friend – bend it to your will
• Use JSON, not XML – Zimbra has almost fully converted all passing of XML to JSON
  • JSON is easy
  • JSON is fast. Eval’ing JSON is faster than parsing XML by a magnitude of 10!
• Use Asynchronous XHR (XMLHttpRequest) calls
• Combine, Compress, and Cache
• Automate Testing – Zimbra uses QuickTest Pro from mercury to test the Zimbra client.
• OO, MVC
• TLS (Transport Layer Security…SSL) – Make sure you use it!
• KISS (Keep it simple, stupid) – this applies to both code and the UI!
• No browser lock-in – don’t program for a specific browser…keep it open to at least the A-Grade browsers
• Test, test, test

Browser Gotchas & Tips

Next came some helpful browser-specific tips and gotchas:

• Firefox
  • Missing Cursor – workarounds exist (surrounding the input with a div…yadda yadda)
  • Event capture – effects DnD effects
  • design mode – lets you turn the Browser into an editor…buggy
  • xmlHttpRequest – bug that pained the CPU when making synchronous calls
  • opacity (linux) – hangs browser (relationship between X11 and opacity)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
  • scrollbar bleed (mac) – scrollbar does not respect z-index
• IE 6
  • string concat with +… – SLOW, use Array joins instead
  • image caching is poor – hard to convince to cache image in browser…workaround: have a hidden div and load the images there first
  • JS engine can be slow
  • Memory leaks – circular reference issue. workaround: give things numeric ids and a lookup table
  • XHR ActiveX object – some memory leaking issues
  • DOM attribute access is slow
• IE 7
  • ActiveX opt-in
  • CSS fixes
  • Native XHR
  • memory leaks appear to be fixed
• Safari
  • No design mode
  • DOM API not fully implemented
  • Debugging difficult (not entirely true)

The 3 C’s

By far the most useful section of Conrad’s presentation was on Zimbra’s 3 C’s; Combine, Compress, and Cache.

Combine
Zimbra uses this technique to minimize the sheer amount of files downloaded by the client which speeds up load time! Conrad suggests:

• Concatenate your JS files and CSS files – Order matters (remember)! Zimbra uses the “Jammer” ANT task to do this dirty work.
• Merge Images – Images are expensive! If your application uses a large number of icons, try merging them into a single image and use background-positioning on elements for the display of icons. For disabled icons, use opacity at 20-50% rather than creating a whole new icon.

Compress
Compression makes things smaller in size…smaller “things” are quicker to download!

• Strip comments and whitespace – use JSMin or ShrinkSafe
• GZIP your Javascript! – All of the A-Grade browsers support gzipping which reduces file size!

Caching
Set proper headers for appropriate browser caching. Avoid redundant downloads. Period.

Conclusion

I respect the Zimbra team and their decisions; their application is solid, functional, and quite sexy. All in all, this was a pretty solid presentation with a nice amount of data. As I mentioned earlier, the 3C’s were the most valuable tid-bits of information for me…although there were a few browser gotchas that I wasn’t aware of.

Monday

10:00am-11:30am: Leveraging Ajax for Enterprise Application Development – Conrad Damon
12:30pm-1:15pm: Keynote: Towards a Service-Oriented Applications Stack – Matt Quinn
1:30pm-3:00pm: Simplify Ajax development with Apache XAP – Bob Buffone
3:30pm-5:00pm: Ruining the User Experience – Aaron Gustafson
5:15pm-6:45pm: Scriptaculous – Justin Gehtland
8:00pm-9:30pm: Expert Panel Discussion

Tuesday

8:30am-10:00am: Intro to Dojo – Alex Russell
10:30am-12:00pm: Yahoo! Experiences with Accessibility, DHTML, and Ajax in Rich (Dunno what Rich is…probably the start of “Rich Internet Applications” [RIA], probably) – Nate Koechley
1:00pm-1:45pm: Keynote: Ajax from AOL’s Perspective – William Morris
2:00pm-3:30pm: RAD 2.0: Working with symfony (PHP) – Dustin Whittle
4:00pm-5:30pm: Markup & CSS for Developers: Empowering the Application Developer with Front End Magic – Molly Holzschlag
7:00pm-7:45pm: Keynote: The Once & Future Web – Chris Wilson
9:00pm-10:30pm: Expert Panel Discussion

Wednesday

9:30am-10:30am: Designing for Ajax – Bill Scott
11:00am-12:30pm: Dojo Cookbook – Dustin Machi

My schedule is subject to change based on buzz or sudden interest in other presentations. I look forward to seeing what they have to offer and will be blogging along the way!

Well, it seems my application for one of the 5 scholarships to The Ajax Experience has gotten through! w00t!

The Ajax Experience is:

Ajaxian and NoFluffJustStuff Java Symposiums (NFJS) are pleased to announce The Ajax Experience 2006 Fall Edition – Boston. We had a great time at the spring event in San Francisco, so we decided to do another show on the east coast. This international event will take place October 23 – 25, 2006 at the brand new Westin Boston Waterfront in Boston, Massachusetts.

The Ajax Experience 2006: Boston show will feature sixty (60) technically focused ninety (90) minute sessions across three (3) full days spanning six (6) parallel tracks with over (40) forty speakers.

We encourage you to register as soon as possible because seating is limited and we anticipate a sold out show. Here is your opportunity to attend one event where you will find authors and industry notables in one place for the duration of The Ajax Experience Fall 2006 show. This is a unique event you should want to be a part of.

When I first heard about the conference last year, I was extremely excited…but had my hopes stomped when I brought the cost to my manager. Ajax was “too new” and the University could not justify the expense of the trip. I waited a year and once again had the eyebrow raised when I brought it up. Not necessarily my manager’s fault…but convincing the University System that they should do something is like convincing a rock it should get up and walk around.

When I saw the Scholarship Program for The Ajax Experience, I got to typing and sent in my application with crossed fingers and high hopes. My typing paid off. Here’s what I wrote:

My name is Matthew Batchelder, I run BorkWeb ( http://borkweb.com), am a co-founder of MasterWish (http://masterwish.com), and am a web application developer at Plymouth State University (PSU) in Plymouth, NH. I’m close by yet so far away.

A few PSU co-workers and I have been steering web development at the university to include Ajax techniques to enhance the speed and usability of our applications on campus. Users have been pleased with the results and want more! But…PSU – being a state-run university – lacks funds to send all of their employees to conferences, especially conferences where the higher-ups [don't know] what valuable information can be attained there – brains, networking, tips, etc. When mentioning this conference both last year and this year, I’ve been met with a handfull of negative responses: “No, we don’t have the resources” to “Ajax…isn’t that a cleaning product?.”

MasterWish – a one and a half year old brainchild of a couple of other developers and myself – has been my playground after work hours. I began my experimentation with Ajax using that site, as PSU tended to slap my hand when looking into Ajax at work. Through that experimentation, I began to understand the workings of Ajax and how it would work into the PHP/Templating environment I was so comfortable with. Once I had dug down, I promptly posted my “Ajax; Templating; and the Separation of Layout and Logic” article that Ajaxian blogged about, along with the follow-up article.

I am building. I am reading. I am experimenting. I am writing. There’s always more to learn and I’d love to see and hear what the Ajax leaders are doing to help guide my train of thought. Re-creating the wheel sucks and conferences are a great way to have a lot of information slammed into your skull and an even better way to network. Sadly, the price of The Ajax Experience admission is too great great a cost for me to fund myself, and PSU [doesn't always] know what’s best for them and refuse to pay. I look to you for help.

Thank you for your consideration. If you need anything more from me, please let me know!
-Matt

I look forward to picking brains, networking, sucking in as much information as I can get, and blogging it all :D So: I owe a HUGE thanks to the guys over at Ajaxian; and a big congrats to the other 4 that received a scholarship. I’ll see you all there!

Oh….and I look forward to the swag:

• All Access Pass – The Ajax Experience
• Branded iPOD Shuffle – The Ajax Experience
• Two free books – Ajax Design Patterns & Java Script: The
  Definitive Guide, 5E
• Free Access to Slides/Audio of The Ajax Experience 2006: San
  Francisco ($250 Value!!)
• Custom Laptop Bags – The Ajax Experience
• The Ajax Experience Shirt
• The Ajax Experience Binder with handouts from sessions attended
• CD with all presentations
• Slides/audio/select videos of The Ajax Experience: Boston
• Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Breaks
• The Ajax Experience Party
• Great Giveaways including iPOD Nanos, iPOD Videos and XBOX 360s

• JavaScript Debugger
• Stack Traces with JavaScript Errors
• Debug JavaScript Errors
• Logging levels and assertions
• printf-like String formatting

For more info, check out the release notes!

(note: I found out about this on Ajaxian)