The Ember.js team has come up with the new version 1.5, with all new testing features, and an URL update that will provide for a better UX 99% of the times. A national training company has considered using the latest version in their Ember.js courses they’re working on.
Ember core team member, Robert Jackson posted on the Ember.js blog, describing the new version having “a ton of bug fixes and small improvements” as well as various new features in the release.
Version 1.5 features Handlebars logging of the primitive value,Jackson described the feature as “the one whichallows you to log primitive values (strings, numbers, etc.) from within your templates.” The previous version would allow the usage of bound property lookup only through the {{log}} helper.
This new release’s testing helper packages include currentPath,currentURL and currentRouteName which makes it easier to make assertions on the state of routing in your application.
Apart from the testing helpers and Handlebars logging, this new version of ember.js also brings slight changes in Ember.computed.oneWay and the new Ember.isBlank shortcut, for the verification that if a particular object is empty or an empty string.
In the previous versions, in order to avoid data propagates, backup users would have to “Ember.computed.oneWay(‘foo’).readOnly()” unlike in the new release which allows developers to use “Ember.computed.readOnly(‘foo’)” for the same desired result.
Other new features include the Eager updating URL: “Previously, the URL in the address bar would only update when the transition ended. The changes caused the URL update immediately unless or until the abortion or rejection of the transition within the same run loop, thus providing for a better UX 99% of the time.
Major bug fixes in Ember.js 1.5 include:
- copy now supports Date
- PromiseProxyMixin reset isFulfilled and isRejected
- bind keeps the arguments from the callback.
- Allow components with layoutName specified by parent class to specify templateName
Positive Response From Community
On the Ember.js Discussion Forum user gordon_kristan said “significant performance decrease going from 1.4.0 to 1.5.0”, and also added “My app has gone from loading the home page in about 5 seconds to taking about 30 seconds.”
Whilst, the factors affecting the decrease of performance were not identified at the time of the press, so Stefan Penner – a member of the core Ember.js team responded to his “[H]opefully not, but this could be related to my performance tuning. We did thoroughly test across several big apps, with only positive throughput improvements.”
Another member of the core Ember.js team Erik Bryn said that “Here at Netflix, we’re seeing better performance with 1.5. Our friends at Discourse are seeing the same. I hope @gordon_kristan can help us get to the bottom of his issue, but it appears to be an isolated incident at this time.”
The beta release of the version 1.6 also came after the 1.5 releases. It includes a performance improvement to the cache lookup throughput and other various new features.