Prototype Changes

I found this article via Ajaxian regarding a nice block of Prototype updates.

• Shorter syntax for event handling

  $('element').observe('click', function(e) {  alert(e); });
  

• Make destructive Element, Form, and Form.Element methods return their first argument, so that multiple calls can be chained together.

  $(“sidebar”).addClassName(“selected”).show();

  The following methods now return their first argument: Element.toggle, Element.hide, Element.show, Element.remove, Element.update, Element.replace, Element.addClassName, Element.removeClassName, Element.observe, Element.stopObserving, Element.cleanWhitespace, Element.scrollTo, Element.setStyle, Element.makePositioned, Element.undoPositioned, Element.makeClipping, Element.undoClipping, Form.reset, Form.disable, Form.enable, Form.focusFirstElement, Form.Element.focus, Form.Element.select, Form.Element.clear, Form.Element.activate, Form.Element.disable, Form.Element.enable.

• Form and Form.Element methods mixed in to $ and $$
• For consistency, Element.toggle, Element.show, and Element.hide no longer take an arbitrary number of arguments.

  !! BACKWARDS COMPATIBILITY CHANGE !!

  If you have code that looks like this: Element.show(‘page’, ‘sidebar’, ‘content’); You need to replace it with code like this: [‘page’, ‘sidebar’, ‘content’].each(Element.show);

• Mix in Form and Form.Element methods to forms and form field elements with $() and $$(). Closes #4448. [Dan Webb, sam]
• Add Object.clone
• Add Form.Element.disable and Form.Element.enable. Closes #4943.
• Field is now simply an alias for Form.Element.
• Add Element.Methods.getElementsByClassName and Element.Methods.getElementsBySelector. Closes #4669.
• Avoid race condition when stopping an Ajax.PeriodicalUpdater. Closes #4809.
• Improve support for synchronous requests. Closes #5916.
• Add serialization and observation support for input type=search. Closes #4096.
• Properly decode query components in String.prototype.toQueryParams. Closes #3487.
• Add Array.prototype.reduce:
  • [1, 2].reduce() // [1, 2]
  • [1].reduce() // 1]
  • [].reduce() // undefined]
• Add Object.keys and Object.values
• Simulate non-GET/POST requests by POSTing with a _method parameter set to the actual verb
• Make Element.update() handle TABLE-related elements with the DOM API because of IE’s missing .innerHTML property on them
• Sync to script.aculo.us unittest.js library as of 2006/08/29
• Add additional unit tests to test/unit/dom.html for testing Element.update and $().update in various enviroments
• Prevent possible exceptions on unloading the page in IE

I’m psyched!