Dan Rigby – Software Development Blog

Wanted to point out some significant news and links that I’ve been meaning to post (mostly for my own reference).

• SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 1 Released:
  • Information: http://blogs.technet.com/dataplatforminsider/archive/2009/04/07/service-pack-1-for-sql-server-2008-available-today.aspx
  • Download: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=6f26fc45-f0ca-49cf-a6ee-840c7e8bb8af&displaylang=en
• Internet Explorer 8 Released:
  • Information: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/default.aspx
  • Download: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/worldwide-sites.aspx
• ASP.NET MVC 1.0 Released:
  • Information: http://www.asp.net/mvc/
  • Download: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=53289097-73ce-43bf-b6a6-35e00103cb4b&displaylang=en
• Expression Blend 3 Preview Released:
  • Information: http://www.microsoft.com/expression/try-it/blendpreview.aspx
  • Download: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=a04aa0ae-87be-4201-a65e-e792859122fc&displaylang=en
• Silverlight 3 Beta Released:
  • Information: http://silverlight.net/themes/silverlight/getstarted/sl3beta.aspx
  • Download: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=11dc7151-dbd6-4e39-878f-5081863cbb5d&displaylang=en
• Microsoft Web Platform Installer 1.0 and 2.0 Beta Released:
  • Information: http://www.microsoft.com/web/downloads/platform.aspx
  • Download:
    • 1.0: http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9588072
    • 2.0 Beta: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=145505

It looks like this weekend while I was at the South Florida Code Camp the jQuery team has posted the official jQuery 1.3.1 Visual Studio intellisense file. You can get it from the jQuery downloads page, or more directly from the jQuery Google Code download page.

The official 1.3.0 documentation was posted this weekend as well and is also available from the downloads link above, or this Google Code download page.

Keep your eyes peeled for a jQuery 1.3.2 release anytime in the next few days as John Resig has mentioned there is still one last 1.3 regression they are working on fixing.

For those interested, the regression has to do with the $(document).ready() function waiting until images are fully loaded in Internet Explorer 6 & 7. The jQuery bug ticket ID is #3988 and here’s a Stack Overflow question in which John Resig talks about the issue in some detail.

Microsoft has released an update for .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1.

Taken from the update page:

An update for the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 (SP1) is available. This article describes information about the issues that the update for the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 fixes.

The update for the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 fixes the issues that are described in the following articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

• 958481  List of the breaking issues with the .NET Framework 2.0 Service Pack 2 after you upgrade to the .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1
• 958483  List of the breaking issues with the .NET Framework 3.0 Service Pack 2 after you upgrade to the .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1
• 958484  List of the breaking issues with the .NET Framework 3.0 Service Pack 1 after you upgrade to the .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1

Joe Healy has blogged about this update and mentions some of the important fixes:

Interesting items fixed (note a full list can be found via the KB) – dynamic data one to one relationships – ASP.NET BrowsCap being broken of FPSE are installed – some broken UpdateProgress control issues – changes in the AutoCommit behavior for Oracle transactions – problems with WPF generating images on the fly via ASP.NET on IIS – and some other fairly freaky stuff – read the kb for all details.

I installed this update today on my Vista x64 work machine and it is actually 3 seperate updates which have to be downloaded and installed in a specific order. Please be sure to read the KB documention as to the order in which to install the updates.

The jQuery team has just released jQuery 1.3.1. This is mainly a bugfix release. You can view the fixed bugs on the jQuery bug tracker. You can download this release by visiting the jQuery Downloads page, or more directly, the 1.3.1 Release Download page. 

The blog post regarding this release makes a few important points to be aware of:

• jQuery support for Safari 2 is being phased out. 
  • Safari 2 has been superceded by Safari 3 and no longer has an appreciable market share.
• Packed versions of jQuery will no longer be available.
  • Packed scripts make debugging more difficult, cause platform incompatibilities (e.g. Adobe Air, Caja), and can actually increase loading times in many cases versus a plain minified script.

This update should not contain any breaking changes. Happy jQuerying!

If you’re like me and feel like writing Javascript without JQuery to be kind of like coding with one hand, you’ll be pleased to know that the JQuery team has released a beta version of JQuery 1.3 for people to test and give feedback on. 

John Resig mentioned in a podcast with Scott Hanselman a few months back that one of the primary goals of the 1.3 release was to increase performance and a quick glance at the important changes listd in this release, specifically rewrites of big parts JQuery like the selector engine, seem to allude to this.

A quick run of the Javascript library benchmark app at http://experiment.bcse.info/slickspeed/ on my machine using Chrome shows a *significant* performance increase in JQuery 1.3b1 versus 1.2.6 (final time of 13ms compared to 26ms, so about a 100% speedup overall).