Not Quite v9

So I finally worked out some of the issues with the new loader and tested my new implementation. There were some pretty strange interactions at work with my release candidate (especially across browsers) that required a re-write. It took some time to work around the evils of document.write() but I found a solution that I think is pretty robust.

All of the current Grazrs on pages aren't using the new loader but rather another 'bridge' loader as sort of an intermediary to the new code. They should continue to work but some of the added features, like multiple Grazrs, won't be available unless you're using the new loader include (you have to go to the grazr config page to get the new include). I will do my best to continue to support the existing installs but I won't guarantee that all new features will work.

A quick request, if you installed a version of the 'preview' code from my previous Alpha9 post, that particular branch won't be supported into the future (due to stability problems with that loader and code). I'll try my best to determine sites that are using the 'preview' code and alert them that they need to migrate to get the new HTML include from the config page.

Speaking the config page, that's actually another new piece of Grazr.com. It has a couple of minor bugs that I'm working on (mainly due to cross browser issues) but they should be ironed out soon. Check it out and let me know what you think. (I'm leaving the old api2 link live for now for people directly linked to it... it will continue to load the old config page).

I had intended to write an announce post yesterday but there were a lot of last minute gotchas, especially with the really weird way IE handles forms, that had me scrambling. I've been at Bar Camp Boston all day today and will be there tomorrow as well but I wanted to write something up although some of you noticed the 'quiet' new feature release, thanks Tom (we still need to talk about killing myspace :) ).

Some people have commented that all of the things I had promised for Alpha 9 aren't in this release. The two pieces that are missing are the optional default styles (I want to tweak them some more) and the in-place configuration mechanism. Both are being held back for a little more testing and polish but should be released shortly. There was a bit of a 'release dry-spell' but I *have* been working on a lot of new functionality. The new loader was a really big hurdle I wanted to get over and now that that's complete the intention is to start more regular releases of new functions.