Web Developer Blog

Windows Scripting: Adding/removing network printers and drives has been updated to show you how to add entries to the event log in case of an error, rather than show a message box.

The JavaScript CompressorRater compares several popular tools used for compressing JavaScript. At the moment, it compares JSMin , Dojo shrinksafe , Packer and the YUI Compressor (which has been recently been released and has very good results so far). Dojo shrinksafe and YUI Compressor require Java and Rhino installing. Packer can be run online and JSMin is a command line tool (with code available in several languages for use within your own applications). Before using any of these tools, it is best to check your syntax is correct (adding the optional semi-colons and checking the code with JSLint ). You can see the results of the compression with several popular JavaScript libraries: jQuery , Prototype , YUI and Scriptaculous . Mootools and Dojo are missing from the comparison. Rather than using one tool to compress your code, it may be better to try several and use the one that gives you the best results.

A new version (1.1.4) of jQuery has been released - jQuery 1.1.4: Faster, More Tests, Ready for 1.2 . There are several notable features in this release: Any name jQuery - so you can use multiple versions of jQuery on the same page (though I wouldn't recommend that if at all possible) - e.g. myobj.jQuery = jQuery.noConflict(true) It is also faster (yet again) - although it is only slow if you call the same query a lot (hundreds) of times (e.g. $("#myel").foo(); $("#myel").bar(); ... instead of $myel = $("#myid"); $myel.foo(); $myel.bar(); ... New features: .slice() (works like the JavaScript array method slice ), :has() (select element only if it has (an)other element(s) in it), recursive .extend() and .noConflict(true) (see first point) Deprecated methods are also detailed in the blog post - i.e. they won't be in jQuery 1.2, with one exception, XPath attribute selector (deprecated in 1.1.4 and 1.2 - $("div[@attr]") )

A cheat sheet for jQuery has recently been created by Matt Kruse and posted on the jQuery discussion list. It is available in Excel format via jQuery Tips (JavaScript Toolbox) or in Google Spreadsheet format (the Excel sheet created by Matt was converted into this format by George Blouin). Being in a spreadsheet format means it is easily editable, to add your own 'cheats'.