A few resources that are mentioned:

• Firefox Extensions (including Firebug)
• jQuery
• Slide Examples
• MegaMan Sprite Animation

Note: this is an updated talk on the workshop I led two years ago

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A few resources that were mentioned:

• Firefox Extensions (including Firebug)
• jQuery
• Slide Examples
• MegaMan Sprite Animation

Here’s the deprecated functionality:

• These Selectors
  • XPath Descendant Selector: $(“div//p”)
  • XPath Child Selector: $(“div/p”)
  • XPath Parent Selector: $(“p/../div”)
  • XPath Contains Predicate Selector: $(“div[p]“)
  • XPath Attribute Selector: $(“a[@href]“)
• Calling clone() with an argument: $(“div”).clone(false);
• These Traversal Functions use the new .slice() instead):
  • $(“div”).eq(0);
  • $(“div”).lt(2);
  • $(“div”).gt(2);
• These Ajax Functions:
  • $(“#elem”).loadIfModified(“some.php”);
  • $.getIfModified(“some.php”);
  • $.ajaxTimeout(3000);
  • $(…).evalScripts();

Thankfully a number of those don’t effect me. I’ll have to comb through my code to get rid of the .gt, .lt, and .eq traversal functions as well as a few of the selectors…but other than that, I’m good to go. To find out more about workarounds for the above removed functionality, check the jQuery 1.2 release notes

Now…on to the good stuff.

New features!

• Selectors
  •  :has(selector)
  •  :header
  •  :animated
  • XPath Selector Plugin
• Attributes
  • .val() Overhaul
• Traversing
  • .map()
  • .prevAll() / .nextAll()
  • .slice()
  • .hasClass()
  • .andSelf()
  • .contents()
• Manipulation
  • .wrapInner() / .wrapAll()
  • .replaceWith() / .replaceAll()
  • Event Cloning
• CSS
  • .offset()
  • .height() / .width() for document and window
• Ajax
  • Partial .load()
  • Cross-Domain getScript
  • JSONP
  • .serialize() Overhaul
  • Disable Caching
• Effects
  • .stop()
  • %/em Animations
  • Color Animations
  • Relative Animations
  • Queue Control
  •  :animated
  • step: Function
• Events
  • Namespaced Events
  • .triggerHandler()
• Internals
  • Documentation Move
  • Expando Management

I have to say…it is a pretty snazzy release and I’ll begin implementing the new version shortly. w00t.

Say I build a web application where I want to assign an onClick event to an <a> tag. In jQuery I’d do it like this:

First the HTML:

<a href="another.html" class="another">Grab Another!</a>

<ul>
  <li><a href="whee.html" class="whatever">Bork</a></li>
  <li><a href="whee.html" class="whatever">Bork</a></li>
  <li><a href="whee.html" class="whatever">Bork</a></li>
</ul>

Now lets do up the JavaScript:

$(document).ready(function(){
  $('a.whatever').bind('click',function(){
    alert('ZOMG Hai');
    return false;
  });
});

Simple, right? Yeah. It is. Nothing new. Now…say that I manipulate the DOM and add in another <a> tag with the class “whatever” that I want the same even applied (with or without Ajax, doesn’t matter). Here’s what I would have had to do in the past:

$(document).ready(function(){
  $('a.another').bind('click',function(){
    $('ul').append('<a href="whee.html" class="whatever">Bork</a>');

    $('a.whatever').bind('click',function(){
      alert('ZOMG Hai');
      return false;
    });

    return false;
  });
});

See that? Kinda complex. Things become quite complex when you begin doing Cross Domain Scripting via Remote JavaScript calls (which is what is heavily used in one of the apps I have done front-end development for).

The Live Query plugin is a beautiful thing as it “auto-magically” binds events to dynamically added elements within the page as they appear! So ALL of that JavaScript from both examples becomes:

$(document).ready(function(){
  $('a.whatever').livequery('click',function(){
    alert('ZOMG Hai');
    return false;
  });

  $('a.another').bind('click',function(){
    $('ul').append('<a href="whee.html" class="whatever">Bork</a>');
    return false;
  });
});

Yup. That’s it. Bind a livequery event to an element and as elements that match appear on the page…BAM! The event is applied.

There are some more advanced things you can do with the plugin and you can find those out at the Live Query site.

jQuery, while a fairly high level JavaScript library is a beautiful thing but can be very daunting to a developer that is new to JavaScripting or is coming from a dissimilar library, being thrust full bore into a ‘new’ way of doing old tricks. (Which jQuery is great at by the way…it makes the new ways super sexy, sleek, and easy). The authors do a great job of explaining what jQuery is and why it is such a powerful tool.

Throughout the book are examples on traversing and manipulating the DOM, event handling, leveraging jQuery’s JS effect capabilities, AJAX, etc; many of which are built off of previously detailed examples, allowing the reader to easily grasp what is going on and why a chunk of code was used.

While I feel this book is primarily an excellent introductory source for diving into the world of JavaScript development with jQuery, the fairly seasoned jQuery user (like myself) may find a trick or two that they hadn’t quite thought of… As I read through, I found a few choice bits that allowed me to make my own code more efficient!

My only real complaint with the book is the index at the back. There are a number of jQuery functions that are discussed within the chapters yet weren’t referenced in the index. A small nitpick, I know, but I’m a sucker for a good index :)

So. Overall, I think the book is a good thing to keep on the bookshelf, whether a you are a jQuery n00b or not. There’s always a co-worker/friend/programming buddy that will want to learn jQuery and what better way to get them rolling on there own than a link to the jQuery docs and a sweet book?

You can get the book here.

Introduction

This has been a long time coming and I am happy to announce the release of Sexy Comments v1.4! With this version comes a lot of changes…so be sure to read the installation section! Along with simple optimizations and general restructure, the following features are now available:

Feature List

• Ajax comment preview (new feature)
• Author post highlighting
• Avatars
  • Either display/hide avatars
  • Select your avatar service of choice (Gravatar and MyBlogLog options are available)
  • Specify maximum avatar dimension (Gravatar Only)
  • Customize default/trackback avatars
• Comment Reply-To (new feature)
• Comment Themes (new feature)
• CSS overriding
• “Number of Comments” message customization
• jQuery inclusion toggling

Installation & Upgrading

1. Download Sexy Comments v1.4 from the WordPress plugin directory
2. Unzip that little sucker
3. Place sexy-comments folder in your wp-content/plugins directory (it should look like this: wp-content/plugins/sexy-comments/
4. Log in to your WordPress plugin admin page and activate the plugin.
5. In the plugin admin page, click the SexyComments sub-menu.
6. Customize the settings until you have something that works for you.
7. Locate your theme’s template file that displays comments (typically comments.php). Remove the comment output loop and replace with:

   < ?php sexycomments::show($comments); ?>
   

8. If you plan to use the Ajax features or the Reply-To features, you will need to do two things.
   1. Enable jQuery and jQuery Form Extension via the Plugin > SexyComments administration page.
   2. Locate the template file that contains the comment submission form (typically comments.php near the bottom) and replace that chunk of code with:

      < ?php sexycomments::form(); ?>
      

   NOTE: Be sure not to touch the section that generates the form for adding comments! This plugin does not re-create the comment creation form.

9. Lastly, consider disabling the plugin CSS and taking the example CSS provided and customize it to suit your theme’s color scheme.
10. You should be all set, now! w00t w00t! Go make a MyBlogLog or Gravatar account if you don’t already have one and upload an avatar. Gravatar tends to be pretty flakey so I’d suggest using MyBlogLog.

FAQs

• Q: What is this “comment loop” you speak of?

  A: Ah, yes. That thing. Well, its anatomy looks similar to this (there will be some variation from theme to theme):

  < ?php if ($comments) : ?>
  	<!-- some HTML is typically here -->
  
  	< ?php foreach ($comments as $comment) : ?>
          <!-- the output HTML of each individual comment -->
  
  	< ?php endforeach; /* end for each comment */ ?>
  	<!--...more HTML -->
   < ?php else : // this is displayed if there are no comments so far ?>
  	< ?php if ('open' == $post->comment_status) : ?>
  		<!-- typically a blank area or a place with a comment -->
  	 < ?php else : // comments are closed ?>
  		<!-- closed comments section -->
  	< ?php endif; ?>
  < ?php endif; ?>
  

• Q: Ok…so I just upgraded to a new version and there is nothing in the SexyComments admin page…WTF?

  A: Yeah. Sorry about that. In this version, the directory structure has changed drastically and Sexy Comments should no longer live in wp-content/plugins/sexycomments.php OR wp-content/plugins/sexycomments/sexycomments.php, but instead it should be in wp-content/plugins/sexy-comments/. Make sure that the plugin is in the correct location of your plugins directory.

• Q: What happened to sexycomments_print($comments)? I used to use that to get my comments to display…will it still work?

  A: Along with a directory structure overhaul, this version had a large code overhaul as well. The old function (sexycomments_print) is deprecated but will still work for the time being. I greatly urge you to move over to the new function call sexycomments::show($comments) as that is the new *impoved* function.

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.

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.