Hey there Internets, it’s the jQuery Core team! We haven’t talked in a while, but over the holidays we were busy fixing the bugs you reported. The result of that hard work is jQuery 1.7.2 Beta 1. We decided to get a beta out by Groundhog Day so you wouldn’t be in the shadow of six more weeks of unfixed bugs.

You can get the code from the jQuery CDN:

• http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.7.2b1.js

Oh, we know what you’re thinking: “Cool, a new version of jQuery; I’ll wait until the final release has been out a few weeks and then I’ll give it a try.” Right, and then you’ll find some bug that keeps you from upgrading. Nothing makes us sadder than finishing up a release and only then seeing a report of a serious bug that could have been fixed earlier.

So please, come out of your burrow and try this beta with your code. Did we miss an old bug? Did we create a new bug that makes you feel like Bill Murray waking up to “I Got You Babe?” We want to know. You can use the bug tracker to report bugs; be sure to create a test case on jsFiddle so we can figure it out easily. If you’re not sure it’s a bug, ask on our forum or on StackOverflow.

jQuery 1.7.2b1 Change Log

The current change log of the 1.7.2b1 release.

Ajax

• #10978: jQuery.param() should allow non-native constructed objects as property values

Attributes

• #5571: Allow chaining when passing undefined to any setter in jQuery

Build

• #10692: Configure the jshint options to more accurately match the style guide
• #10902: ability to test a built version of jQuery in unit tests
• #10931: Unit tests shouldn’t require internet access

Core

• #10466: jQuery.param() mistakes wrapped primitives for deep objects

Css

• #10639: outerWidth(true) and css(‘margin’) returning % instead of px in Webkit
• #10754: have jQuery.swap return the return of the callback instead of just executing it
• #10782: Incorrect calculating width
• #10796: Bug in IE7 with $(‘#el’).css.(‘background-position’)
• #10858: css.js regular expressions are incomplete
• #11119: The curCSS function only need 2 arguments

Effects

• #8498: Animate Hooks
• #10006: method show is not working as expected in all browsers when called for document fragment
• #10848: Animation toggling loses state tracking in certain atomic edge cases

Event

• #8165: .live(‘click’, handler) fires on disabled buttons with child elements in Chrome
• #10819: Eliminate “this.on.call(this, “
• #10878: $(“select”).live(“change”, function(){ …broken in IE8 in jQuery 1.7
• #10961: Error in XRegExp using jQuery 1.7.1 in IE6-9
• #10970: The .on() selector parameter doesn’t work with :not(:first) selector
• #10984: Cannot off() custom events ($.event.special)
• #11021: Hover hack mangles a namespace named “hover”
• #11076: .clone(true) loses delegation filters
• #11130: jQuery.fn.on: binding map with null selector ignores data
• #11145: $(document).on() not working with name=”disabled”

Manipulation

• #9427: Passing undefined to .text() does not trigger setter
• #10753: inline the evalScript function in manipulation.js as it’s only used once
• #10864: text() method on a document fragment always returns the empty string
• #11055: Update HTML5 Shim elements list to support latest html5shiv

Misc

• #10952: .fired() doesn’t work on Callbacks object when it is flagged with “once”
• #11257: Wrong path to source files in test suite if PHP missing

Support

• #11048: Support Tests affect layout for positioned elements in IE6-9

We’ve gotten a lot of feedback since last week’s announcement about the plugins site’s unfortunate tumble into oblivion, and I’d like to address a few of the most important concerns that have surfaced since.

“Could you make the old backup available for posterity?”

Yes. We can — and have. Over the weekend, we restored the most recent backup we had, and the original site is now living at archive.plugins.jquery.com; you should be able to browse through everything that’s there to your heart’s content. We also applied the most recent user information we had, so if you had an account on the old site at any point in the last year, it should still work. However, the site is closed to new user registrations. If you really need a new account, please get in touch with me personally and I can get that straightened out for you. We’ve also set up a redirect, so that if you should encounter any links to plugins.jquery.com in your browsing, you’ll (hopefully) end up at the corresponding page in the archive.

Just get a backup from the Wayback Machine!

While the Internet Archive has cached versions of content that was updated more recently than last October, we just don’t have the people-power to re-create the lost posts manually in the new archive site. If you have an account, you can feel free to add “new” or old plugins, or update existing ones, should you desire to. However, this archive will not be indexed by search engines.

If you hate CMS-es so much, what’s with WordPress?

We’re in the middle of a network-wide redesign, and WordPress offers us a valuable set of tools when it comes to theming, searching, and serving a group of sites. Our new motto, however, is pull requests, not passwords; we’re implementing theming, documentation, plugins, and more in such a way that contribution will not actually require an account on our CMS at all. As I outlined in the initial post, the plugin submission process will only involve adding a post-receive hook to your repository. In the event of a similar catastrophe, we’re made sure we’ll be able to replay the entire plugin contribution history and get the site back up to speed right away. Our goal is to leverage the WordPress features we find useful without it serving as a barrier to entry or as the canonical warehouse of content. If you are of the mind that WordPress is always a bad idea, no matter what, no matter how, you’re certainly entitled to that opinion, but at this point, it’s not particularly beneficial to the conversation.

Git(Hub) is hard

The new plugins site will serve as an index of plugins, with a simple “download” button right on each plugin’s page. You will not have to just browse around GitHub looking for jQuery plugins. If you don’t know git and only ever want to download jQuery plugins, you don’t have to learn it. However, if you want to submit plugins, you’ll have to be using some sort of source control that you can at least mirror in git. This is by design: it can be really easy to build a jQuery plugin, but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily fit for public consumption. Requiring the use of source control and package.json are passive mechanisms that will help ensure that plugins which proliferate are authored by developers who have met a reasonable baseline (and aren’t selling batteries). We’re only targeting GitHub support for launch, but we’d like to add support for other services as well. We are actively avoiding the use of GitHub-specific features that would force us to limit the site to GithHub users permanently.

It’s A Conspiracy!

Some have called into question the veracity of my account, and that’s understandable, given the timing and circumstances. But believe me, the last thing I wanted to do after spending a day manually pruning spam from the directory was turn around and cause a gigantic headache for thousands of people, including myself and my colleagues. I hope the re-launching of the last backup at least partially allays these concerns. Additionally, we’re starting off with GitHub simply because it has a very broad user base already, and it has been incredibly positive for us since we shifted to it for development of jQuery Core, UI, and Mobile.

Thanks again for bearing with us during this transition.