Version 1.2 of the jQuery JavaScript library has been released. There seems to have been quite a few subtle alterations to the selector and AJAX systems so if you’ve done some development with jQuery and want to upgrade then you should read How To Upgrade on the jQuery wiki. I myself shall be looking into this in the near future.
I’ve recently been looking into new Linux desktop torrent programs to possibly use as a replacement for Azureus. Deluge is the first one that I looked at and, overall, I’ve found it to be satisfactory and is well worth considering if you’re after a native Linux client.
CoScripter is a new experimental Firefox extension by IBM that allows you to automate manual process that you do on the web. So, for example, if your bank forces you through a couple steps to get to your bank balance then you can use CoScripter to handle all the clicks and forms for you.
You could also use it as a form of semi-automated web testing, in a similar manner to Selenium, except that it would be more limited. For quick and dirty testing of your site’s functionality it should be more than enough.
Omar Kilani, from Remember The Milk, has written up a fantastic contribution to the Google Developer Knowledge Base entitled “Taking web applications offline with Google Gears”. Fittingly, it goes through what Google Gears is, how it is used, a general strategy for moving your web application over to using it and how it was used at RTM.
If you’re interested in adding offline functionality to your web app, or you’d like to know more about Google Gears, then I recommend giving this a read.
Microsoft has released Silverlight 1.0, the company’s intended Flash-killer, and has announced that it will be working with Novell to provide support for the open source, Mono-based implementation, Moonlight.
Despite what I wrote my previous post on tracker, it turns out that there is a desktop search utility that connects to tracker. I stumbled upon it by accident today when I was looking for something else in my menu. It’s found in Applications -> Accessories -> Tracker Search Tool.