ddadmin

It would be good if they had a permanent link to the latest version, like:

Code:

http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/latest/jquery.min.js

or just:

Code:

http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/jquery.min.js

Or would that be problematic with caches?

I think browser caching would be an issue in the above case, yes. That, plus Google Ajax API supposedly also enables additional features, such as load jQuery only on demand etc. I haven't really explored the docs on that.

Guess what I found, latest version of jQuery:

Code:

http://code.jquery.com/jquery-latest.js
or just:
http://code.jquery.com/jquery.js
and minified:
http://code.jquery.com/jquery-latest.min.js

Also, you could load the latest 1.3.x and 1.x.x respectively:

Code:

http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3/jquery.min.js
or:
http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1/jquery.min.js

I have no idea how this works with the cache and whether it's better or worse to use these links, but it's useful if you don't want to change the links in all your pages or if you just want to download the latest version with just a few keystrokes.

In many cases though, this is just adding more work for the browser to do and/or linking to a host with less than optimal bandwidth available at the time the code is requested, slowing down your page. Ideally these external links to script libraries would speed things up because wide use would result in scripts being cached on the user end. However, with multiple versions, updates, the lack of consensus on which libraries to use, the actual scripts using the libraries going out of date due to updates to the libraries and a general lack of widespread enough use of the hosted libraries, it is probably still best to code in ordinary javascript, or if a library is used, include the most appropriate one for your script with its distribution.

Isn't there a danger of not knowing exactly what you are doing when you use a library?
Apart from that, I must admit that jQuery does have very nice 'things'.
===
Arie

@ddadmin:
I'm getting an error in IE8 - I tried to do some debugging, but haven't had much time, to debug I'm using: /1.3.2/jquery.js (non-minified)

Code:

		// IE uses filters for opacity
		if ( !jQuery.support.opacity && name == "opacity" ) {
			if ( set ) {
				// IE has trouble with opacity if it does not have layout
				// Force it by setting the zoom level
				elem.zoom = 1;

				// Set the alpha filter to set the opacity
				elem.filter = (elem.filter || "").replace( /alpha\([^)]*\)/, "" ) +
					(parseInt( value ) + '' == "NaN" ? "" : "alpha(opacity=" + value * 100 + ")");
			}

			return elem.filter && elem.filter.indexOf("opacity=") >= 0 ?
				(parseFloat( elem.filter.match(/opacity=([^)]*)/)[1] ) / 100) + '':
				"";
		}

		name = name.replace(/-([a-z])/ig, function(all, letter){
			return letter.toUpperCase();
		});

		if ( set )
			elem[ name ] = value;

		return elem[ name ];
	},

IE8 says error is at Line:1061 Char:4
In MS Visual Studio 2K5, line 1061, is the elem[name]=value - right before the last return statement.

I included the chunk of code in scope, which shows that this has to do with the IE filtering/opacity portion of jquery. Any luck on getting this to work in IE8?


@molendijk:
There is always a danger. Generally, if using an untrusted library, the danger is that an external site could be retrieving/storing private user information. Other dangers could be more malicious, but generally not performed with JavaScript.

In this particular case, jQuery implements some dom ready events, which may be placed higher in the stack. This generally doesn't mean much, but if you have your own code that that you want to run, when the dom is ready, then this could pose a delay and a perceived performance hit, depending on what is being done. I've noticed this due to the pre-loading of the images in the script. The result is to place your other code before this slideshow load script, so that it is placed in the stack first.

btw, i also tried version 1.4.2, some stuff was changed, but the error is still happening at the same spot.

I'm not sure if this is a jQuery problem, or a fadeslideshow.js problem

I just realized I had two different Dynamic Drive pages open, these comments were referencing a dynamic slideshow fade: http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamici...nslideshow.htm

and just a follow-up, the reason why it's not working is because from the article, the in-page script has you set the width of the gallery container. I set the width to '100%', which works in FF and Chrome, but not IE. I'm not sure why this is breaking in jQuery for IE, other than the fact that setting an element's css width style to '100%' is not working, perhaps jQuery sets it with a unit, so that it's '100%px', which would fail.

Anyhow, to get the effect that I wanted, I manually set the width to 100% directly in the HTML, then when building the gallery I sent the width as a blank string '' (single quotes), which I'm assuming would either skip over the width attribute in jQuery, or would set it to 'auto'. Either way, that's how to get the slideshow to work without setting the width.