John Resig and the jQuery team have released jQuery 1.1.4.

This release addresses bugs, improves performance, adds some functionality, and deprecates some functionality in anticipation of changes upcoming in jQuery version 1.2.

Both standard and packed .js files are available at code.jquery.com.

jQuery Bugfixes

This latest release addresses 53 problem tickets (including those fixed in the 1.1.3.1 emergency release), improving computed styles in Safari, HTML script evaluation, and Ajax settings issues.

jQuery Library Improvements

Besides bugfixes, you can now rename jQuery. This allows multiple instances of jQuery to be included, side-by-side. Further, it allows you to use jQuery within the namespace of another library, such as the Yahoo! UI toolkit.

The new release also includes speed improvements over version 1.1.3 in id and element selectors, and with each() operations.

jQuery New Features

jQuery version 1.1.4 introduces some new functionality as well.

.slice() allows you to grab a “slice” of a selector result vector, and operates like the Javascript array slice method.

:has() allows you to further qualify a selector, as in $(“a:has(img)”) to select all anchors that contain an image element.

Deep .extend() allows objects to be merged without overwriting internal objects.

Deprecations

In preparation for jQuery 1.2, some items are deprecated in version 1.1.4.

Some XPath selectors are being dropped. An XPath plugin is being introduced with 1.2, and in the meantime CSS selector formats must suffice. For example, instead of using the XPath child selector $(“div/p”), you now use the CSS selector $(“div > p”).

The parameterized .clone() method is now deprecated.

DOM traversal methods .eq(), .lt(), and .gt() are deprecated, replaced by the new .slice() method.

Ajax methods .loadIfmodified() and .getIfModified() are deprecated and replaced by the long form .ajax() method. .ajaxTimeout() is deprecated as the long-form .ajaxSetup() will suffice. .evalScripts() is no longer needed since all scripts are evaluated are now automatically evaluated upon injection.