Prototype 1.5.1: Release candidate 3

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).

Read more and download over at the Prototype site