jQuery v1.2: Major new release, sneak peak at jQuery UI

Hot on the heels of the jQuery v1.1.4 release, John Resig and the jQuery team put the pedal to the metal and announced their newest release, jQuery v1.2.

This is a massive new release of jQuery that's been a long time in the making - and it's ready for your consumption!

This release is feature packed adding such new features as:

• Cross-domain script access
• Support for JSONP
• Numerous new traversal methods
• em/% Animations
• Color Animations
• Purple-include style .load()
• Queue control for animations

Following the tradition of "playing nice with other libraries", jQuery v1.2 now provides the ability to define a custom namespace for the events expando, thus adding one more method of ensuring that jQuery developers can successfully work in a multi-library environment. John Resig had this to say:

It's incredibly important for us, and our users, that the jQuery library work in any JavaScript environment. In jQuery 1.2 you can now depend on the fact that jQuery will protect itself from outside code influences, and libraries, even going so far as to protect itself from other versions of jQuery that might be running on the same page. Knowing that your copy of jQuery will always behave the way you expect it, no matter what the platform, is the cornerstone of the project.

Along those same lines of working for the community, the team has provided jQuery developers with an easy way to migrate into jQuery v1.2 by providing a compatibility plugin. With some functionality being removed in jQuery v1.2 release, including this plugin allows developers to have all of the features that were removed in the newest release.

The full release notes provide details about all of these new features.

You can get the latest release of JQuery below:

jQuery 1.2: (How To Upgrade)

• jQuery Minified (14kb with Gzipping)
• jQuery Packed (26kb)
• jQuery Regular (77kb)

Plugins:

• jQuery 1.1 Compatibility Plugin
• XPath Compatibility Plugin
• Color Animation Plugin

As if a new major release wasn't enough to whet your appetite, on Sunday, September 16th, the new jQuery UI effects library will be released to the public. The library will include:

• Draggables
• Droppables
• Resizables
• Shadows
• Sliders
• Sortables
• Tabs
• Accordions
• Selectables
• Trees
• Modals

All completely documented, demoed, themed, and 100% Free Open Source Software.

Here's a sneak peak at what to expect:

Lead developer of jQuery UI, Paul Bakaus, had this to say:

We worked hard over the last three months to make UI a seamless, rock-solid solution for many interface situations. It's nearly there - featuring many core level modules, ready-to-go widgets and custom, unique themes. To make the experience even nicer, the team created a smart downloader, a playground with demo apps and tests and of course documentation. We are pretty excited about our release on Sunday - be sure not to miss it!