Working on SPServices v0.6.0…

I released SPServices v0.5.8 on 14 November, 2010, but I’m already hard at work on v0.6.0. A major goal for this release is to refactor the code, looking to reduce the size of codebase and improve efficiency, yet maintain readability. This should be a significantly improved release internally, and will require more extensive testing than some other releases. Thus the giant jump to 0.6.0!

For this release, I’m passing SPServices through jslint (thanks to Alex Angas [@alexangas], David Marsh,  and others for the suggestion) and attempting to meet the same standards the jQuery team uses. Much of what I’m finding with jslint is stylistic stuff, but important, nonetheless. For instance, I’ve pretty consistently omitted the enclosing squiggly brackets {} if there’s only one line following a conditional test. I agree that this is lazy and makes the code harder to read and work with, so I’m fixing it throughout.

Of course, I’m also going to add new functionality to v0.6.0 as well. For a current view of the plans, check out the Issue Tracker in Advanced Mode, filtering for the SPServices 0.6.0 release. My plans often change mid-release, but with more and more people relying on SPServices, I’m trying to make the workings of the sausage factory a bit more visible.

Are there things you’d like to see in SPServices that you think are missing or important? Have you tried SPServices and abandoned it because you had problems? Let me know about it. The best way to do that is to add a post to the Discussions on the Codeplex site. From there I can convert to an item in the Issue Tracker easily, once we’ve nailed down what you’re looking for. There are also a lot of suggestions in the Issue Tracker already. Take a look at what’s there and vote up anything you’d like to see.

Back to the bench…

<UPDATE DateTime="2010-11-26 10:55:00">
If you’re game to do some regression testing, I’d really appreciate it. Grab the current ALPHA and let me know if you see any issues. I’ll be posting the jslint reports soon (as soon as I’m comfortable with them) for your comments there as well.
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