There’s a brand new 1.7.1 beta 2 release of script.aculo.us.
In script.aculo.us itself there have been only two small bug fixes for the autocompleting code since beta 1, but the main reason to get this release out is the included Release candidate 4 of Prototype 1.5.1, which has lots and lots of overall improvements, performance tweaks and some cool new features.
More stuff is up ahead, and I hope some of it will make it in before my RailsConf tutorial—let’s see!
Beta warning: Things might not work as you might expect, though they really should—if you hit any problems, please use the bug tracker and give reports. The same that applies to Prototype applies for script.aculo.us too, so read the how to contribute page to see how you can help out here!
Prototype 1.5.1 is making steady progress and this should be the last release candidate before the final version—and we’ve already lots of stuff up our sleeves for 1.6.0!
Next to some bugfixes, the third release candidate also brings some cool new enhancements:
Faster $$() utility and Element.getElemementsBySelector method.
Optimized Element.next, Element.down, Element.up and Element.previous DOM methods.
Speed improvements of String#escapeHTML and String#unescapeHTML in IE and Safari.
Ajax.Requests now supports per-request onCreate callbacks.
JSON strings are automatically stripped of their security delimiters (if present) before eval.
All toJSON methods now generate YAML-loadable JSON.
Event.element now returns an extended element.
Linefeed normalisation is now prevented in IE on String#escapeHTML and String#unescapeHTML for consistency with other browsers.
Added a new Element.childElements method (shorter alias of Element.immediateDescendants).
Added a new Element.firstDescendant method (same as using Element.down with no arguments).
Weighting in at 544 pages on sweet, sweet Prototype and script.aculo.us, Dave Crane and Bear Bibeault’s new book Prototype and Scriptaculous in Action just hit the shelves. And it’s packed with stuff for beginners and pro’s alike.
As it happens, I wrote the foreword for the book, which you can read online. 😉
Next to a crash-course on getting started with the fun, you’ll get a comprehensive introduction to the concepts around the libraries, plus it features great references tables for all the various options available here and there. It also has sample code to show how to use various server-side development environments, to help get you on track wheter you’re using Rails, Java or PHP.
What’s more, there are more books coming soonish, so stay tuned!
On the heels of the recent Prototype 1.5.1 release candidate, here’s the latest and greatest version of script.aculo.us: 1.7.1 beta 1.
Beta warning: Things might not work as you might expect, though they really should—if you hit any problems, please use the bug tracker and give reports. The same that applies to Prototype applies for script.aculo.us too, so read the how to contribute page to see how you can help out here!
So, what’s new?
The most important change is the update to Prototype 1.5.1 which yields major performance improvements, slick new JSON support and various fixes all around. Note that the version of Prototype that comes with script.aculo.us 1.7.1 beta 1 is actually a few steps ahead of the 1.5.1_rc1 release and already incorporates a few additional fixes, so please use the version that comes with the script.aculo.us download.
The other important feature is experimentalsound support for those little .mp3-based sound effects, which works natively in IE, and relies on whatever mp3 plugins are available on other browsers (for Macs, this means quicktime). It’s thought as an alternative to flash-based mp3 playback for sounds effects (not music!). Kudos to Jules Gravinese for coming up with the initial implementation of this! Here’s a little example of how to use this (be sure to include sounds.js or use the script.aculo.us loader, scriptaculous.js):
The effects engine has seen some performance overhaul, and together with the new Prototype performance goodnees is screaming fast. Also, a memory leak in the morph code was found and fixed on Firefox.
More changes and features added include a new “failure” option to Draggables, and onDropped callback, more customization for in-place editing, and nesting single nodes in the DOM builder.
As always, I heavily encourage you to study the CHANGELOG to get the full details on all of this.
The API documentation has been updated to reflect this, so there’s no excuse not to make the jump to Prototype 1.5.1—if you do find any issue, please report it.
Update: If you want to use Prototype 1.5.1_rc0 with script.aculo.us, be aware the the current 1.7.0 version requires Prototype 1.5.0, so be sure to grab the latest and greatest SVN trunk version of script.aculo.us which works fine with Prototype 1.5.1, and takes advantage of the updates. A script.aculo.us 1.7.1 release candidate should be coming soon…
If you’re reading this, you’re most probably a developer and/or designer and spending lots of time editing text, so be sure to know all about the various shortcuts and powerful functions that are at your fingertips. The book really makes it easy to dig deeper into TextMate.
For all of you interested in a solid introduction to and what to expect when using Prototype and script.aculo.us, I’m doing a talk on Spending the weekends at home again at QCon London, on Friday, March 16.
Head over to the QCon site for more info about the conference.
The aerogel-weight mobile JavaScript framework, which also works great for Safari and Chrome extensions. The jQuery-compatible API makes it easy to pick up, and it's just 5k to 7k in size!
For all of you interested in a solid introduction to and what to expect when using Prototype and script.aculo.us, I’m doing a talk on 
