script.aculo.us 1.7.1 beta!

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 experimental sound 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):

Sound.play('blah.mp3');

Of course, there’s some heated discussion about this—we’ll see where this will take us.

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.

So, what are you waiting for? Download here!
(other archive types available too).

Lastly, thanks to all the contributors and the community! 🙂

P.S. I’ll be in London this week for Qcon, so if you want to discuss this or other stuff and you’re in the area, you should be able to find me around.