Today, we released jQuery 1.4, a mostly backward compatible release with a few minor quirks. One of these quirks is that jQuery now uses the native JSON parser where available, rejecting malformed JSON.

This probably sounds fine, except that by malformed JSON, we mostly mean:

{foo: "bar"}

Because this is valid JavaScript, people have long assumed it was valid JSON, and a lot of hand-coded JSON is written like this. Thankfully, JSON automatically generated by Rails does not have this problem, so most of you guys should not have an issue here.

If you have server-side JSON that can’t be quickly fixed in the transition to jQuery 1.4, you can use the compatibility plugin, which tries to patch a number of small incompatibilities, or you can use this workaround:

$.ajax({url: "/url", 
  dataType: "json",
  success: function(json) {
    // do something with json
  }
});
 
// becomes
 
$.ajax({url: "/url",
  dataType: "text",
  success: function(text) {
    json = eval("(" + text + ")");
    // do something with JSON
  }
});

Essentially, this is what jQuery used to do to evaluate JSON, so with these small changes you can get the old behavior.

Again, though, you should probably be modifying your busted server-side code to stop sending malformed JSON!

As you might know, I’m putting the final touches on jQuery in Action, an introductory book on all things jQuery for Manning Publications. I’ve spent the last half a year diligently plugging away at it, along with my co-author Bear Bibeault, and we’re finally hitting the home stretch.

It’s taken a lot of time, and focus, and while it’s been a great experience, I’m also looking forward to being able to once again put my full energy into the various Open Source projects I’m involved in (including jQuery, of course). We’re reviewing typeset PDF’s of what looks to be just about ready to print — there’s light at the end of this tunnel!

The book is set to print in early to mid-January; as a final push before publication, Manning is offering 30% off until December 31st, with the code JQM30. Though the book is also available on Amazon.com, among other places, Manning is the only place you can also get the e-book, which at least for me, is really important.

Thanks to everyone who’s been there for me in this crazy busy time, and for everyone who’s had to grin and bear it while my focus was split. I’m almost done!

A loooong time ago, I wrote a bunch of event normalization code as a plugin to jQuery. In essence, the goal was the get events as close as possible to the DOM specification while retaining a sane file-size and backwards compatibility with existing code.

I wanted to add support for:
* relatedTarget, which, on mouse movement, returns the element that the mouse was previously on when moving onto or off of an element
* “which” for key events, which would return a normalized keyCode
* metaKey, which would return the Apple key on OSX, and the ctrl key in Windows (allowing stuff like apple-B to render something bold in OSX, but ctrl-B to do the same in Windows… the expected behavior)
* And a biggie: “which” support for buttons (1 for left-click, 2 for middle-click, and 3 for right-click).

I originally had some more grandiose plans, like supporting offsetX across browsers and getting keyCode to be the same cross-browser on keypresses, but those ended up either requiring unacceptable dependencies or requiring lots of messy code to get working.

Today, jQuery merged relatedTarget, which (for keys and buttons), and metaKey into the core jQuery distribution, and we did it without adding a single byte to the current 20k cap on jQuery’s filesize. We also added a whole slew of new features, without sacrificing our current cap. I say it’s incredible, and thanks to the hard, tireless work of the jQuery Core Team. The speed improvements, which are the work of jQuery’s maintainer, John Resig, also happened, sort of unexpectedly, without busting the 20k.

Amazing.

Back to the event normalization, I think you’ll find that between the old normalization that was present since the early days (event.target and event.pageX/pageY), and this new code, you’ll be able to do all sorts of neat tricks without having to put much thought into browser compatibility issues.

Enjoy!

Those of you who have been around for a while know that in September of last year I published the first issue of the Visual jQuery Magazine. In October, the magazine was also released in French.

The mag had interviews with important jQuery community members (like creator John Resig, plugin editor Dave Cardwell, etc.), articles on jQuery features and implementations, and even a piece or two on alternate Javascript libraries, complete with quality graphics and original art.

The positive response was incredible, and people really seemed to like it. Unfortunately, though I’d initially planned on making the magazine a monthly publication, things fell to the wayside as my schedule got progressively more hectic. Since Issue 1 I’ve found a new job (new then; about eight or nine months old now), moved across the country (NY to CA), and gotten a huge chunk of the way through writing my first book (stay tuned for details!). Clearly, things have been busy.

The lack of Issue 2 has been bugging me since Issue 1, and I’ve decided it’s time to make it happen (this, I admit, is also largely in part to my good friend Rey Bango’s recently renewed effort to push jQuery forward). Thankfully, the magazine’s lead designer and the team of French developers/translators have all expressed an interest in helping make Issue 2 happen, which makes this goal a lot more tangible.

Issue 1 was an experiment, and it went really well. Since it was a first though, it was very much “the Yehuda show.” I’d like Issue 2 to be more of a collaboration of contributors; there are a lot of jQuery topics to explore, and a lot of team member and users with fascinating tales to tell.

As such, I’m putting the word out there. I’m looking for contributions for Issue 2 of Visual jQuery Magazine. Articles can vary in length extensively, from brief three paragraph shorts, to three page features. They can be tutorials, feature articles, interviews and lots of other things I’m sure you’ll all think of. Just a few brief (and somewhat flexible) guidelines:

Please email a proposal or brief description of your submission before spending a chunk of time working on it; that way we can avoid running out of space and ensure that everything print-worthy gets in. Email submissions and letters to the editor to editor AT visualjquery DOT com.

As I said from the beginning of this project, I think that the magazine has real potential to open up the jQuery world to new users, and hope that by pushing the envelope of community-produced content, we can keep jQuery moving forward in it’s current positive direction. I, for one, I’m really excited about it.