But, until next time, here’s what’s new in 2.9.2:

• fixed a bug introduced in the previous release that broke functionality in IE8 and below…yes, I forgot a console.log() in the code!
• fixed a bug where the “image” control would not have the “alt” attribute set, and so the resulting HTML could not be validated by the W3C validator;
• fixed a bug where the iFrame used for checking uploaded files client-side was sometimes be visible on IE8 and below;
• changed how the upload path needs to be specified for the “upload” rule, which now needs to be a full web path (so not server path nor a relative path) and “process.php” and the “_upload” method in Zebra_Form.php will automatically determine the correct server path to where to upload the files to; hopefully this will solve the problems people were having; still, being behind a reverse-proxy will require manual adjustment of the logic used both in “process.php” and in the “_upload” method in “Zebra_Form.php”;
• the “dependencies” rule now also supports “submit” buttons/images; see the example for a scenario where it makes sense;
• removed the * (all) selector from CSS and now custom elements placed in both custom and auto-generated templates don’t suffer from it;
• the “attach_tip” JavaScript method can now be used on any element, not just on those that already have rules attached;
• clientside_validation method has a new “on_ready” property used for specifying a JavaScript function to be executed when the form is ready; useful for getting a reference to Zebra_Form object *after* it’s ready – see the documentation for an example;
• updated Spanish language file; thanks WaKeMaTTa;

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• dropped support for PHP4; minimum required version is now PHP 5.0.2;
• fixed some compatibility issues affecting the “dependencies” rule when used with radio buttons and jQuery 1.9.0+;
• added support for date picker’s “always_show_clear” and “always_visible” properties; thanks to Sebastian Popa;
• fixed a bug where the script would sometimes fail to determine the correct path for file uploads; thanks to John Prentice;
• fixed a bug where dates having random extra white-space in them would pass validation; thanks to Arne Tarara;
• fixed a bug where setting the “require_protocol” argument of the “url” rule to TRUE, had no effect client-side; thanks Stefan;
• fixed an error in the documentation; thanks Stefan;
• fixed a small bug where when specifying custom attributes for an element as a string rather than an array, would trigger a PHP warning; thanks Søren;
• fixed a small issue with the file uploads where the content of the iFrame used for the client-side validation was destroyed before being fully loaded, resulting in a “Canceled” status rather than a 200 (OK); this was not affecting functionality;

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• fixed a bug where disabling weekdays resulted in date to never pass validation;

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Here’s what’s new in 2.9.0:

• fixed a few depencies related bugs; thanks to Arne Tarara
• fixed an issue that broke the library’s functionality when using jQuery 1.9.0 (which removed $.browser);
• fixed a bug where date format not including days or month (like only ‘Y’ or ‘M, Y’, etc) would never pass validation; thanks to Hicham;
• fixed a bug where the “Clear” button on the date picker was not using the string from the language file; thanks Nicola Tuveri;
• fixed an issue where the library would break with plugins that hide the original elements and put in their places divs having the exact same classes as the original element; thanks to Daniele Picca
• fixed a bug where the “length” rule was not taken into consideration when using “auto_fill” for elements having also the “digits” and/or “number” rule set;
• fixed a bug where if the “length” rule had a fourth argument (the show_counter argumet), the error message would be empty;
• fixed a bug where a text longer than set by the “length” rule could be set as default for an element;
• fixed a bug in “process.php” which broke CAPTCHA images in PHP 5.4.0+ because the second argument to the “imagejpeg” function was an empty string instead of “null”; thanks to Thomas;
• fixed an issue where elements having an empty string as name could be created;
• fixed an issue where the library would sometimes generate “strict warnings” for PHP 5.3.0+;
• custom attributes (like class names or other attributes) can now be specified when creating bulk radio buttons and checkboxes by adding a 4th argument; see the last example in each of the two links;
• added Italian language file; thanks Nicola Tuveri;
• updated German and French language files; thanks Andreas Schwarz;
• some updates and corrections in the documentation; thanks to Hicham, Søren and Oliver Jones;
• updated Zebra_DatePicker to version 1.6.7;

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Here’s what’s new:

• fixed a bug where dependencies were working only if the proxy element was a radio button or a checkbox; set thanks to Hicham;

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Here’s what’s new:

• fixed a bug where setting some of the date control’s properties would break the date picker; thanks to Bastian Flinspach;
• fixed a bug where seting the “length” rule to having “0″ (no limit) as the upper limit, would set the element’s “maxlength” attribute to “0″; thanks to Bastian Flinspach;
• fixed a bug where keypress events on an file upload control were ignored;
• fixed a bug where the “clientside_validation” method was always using the default values if the form contained at least one file upload control; thanks to Antonio Marmolejo;
• fixed a bug where the character count on textareas was not done correctly if the text contained characters that would get transformed into HTML entitite; thanks to Antonio Marmolejo
• fixed some inconsistencies in the documentation;
• updated Zebra_DatePicker to version 1.6.6;

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Here’s what’s new:

• fixed a bug where dependencies on an element with no other rules would be ignored;
• fixed a bug where custom arguments for the “custom” rule were not passed correctly;
• fixed a bug where since the last release the files upload control was not working anymore;
• fixed a bug where the library would trigger a JavaScript error if none of the form’s element would have any validation rule;
• some updates in the documentation
• updated Zebra_DatePicker to version 1.6.5;

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Aside from the usual bug fixes and some smaller new features, there are some two features that bring a lot of value to the library: the first one is the newly added auto_fill method which can be used both for adding default values to for elements in one single step rather than on a per-element basis as well as for automatically filling form elements with random values (but obeying the rules) – this should prove as a real time saver as we all know how much time is lost when we have to fill forms with garbage in order to debug our forms. See the example.

The most important new feature is the newly added “dependencies” rule. Use it to create conditional validation where an element will be validated only if other element/elements have certain values. The nice thing about it is that whenever one of the elements that on which other elements depend on changes value, a callback function will be called making it easy to show/hide elements or group of elements whenever necessary. See the example and peek into the documentation;

Here’s the full list of changes for this version:

• added a new rule called “dependencies”; using it you can now have conditional validation (elements that are validated only if one or more other controls have certain values); see the example and peek into the documentation;
• for browsers that obey the “accept” attribute for file upload controls (at the time of writing Chrome 16+ and IE 10), the file browser will now only show the files defined by the “filetype” rule or images only if the “image” rule is set;
• added a new method: auto_fill – call this method to instruct the library to automatically fill out all or only selected form’s fields with random content while obeying any rules that might be set for each control – huge time saver for when debugging forms; check out the example;
• added a new method: captcha_storage by which the storage method for CAPTCHA values can be changed from “cookie” to “session”; useful for users who have very restrictive cookie policies;
• uneditable prefixes can now be added to text and password inputs – like “http://” or an area code like “+(40)”, or images and html; check out the examples and the documentation;
• users can now regenerate CAPTCHAS if needed; see the examples;
• previously, server-side, dates where only checked for format but not also for direction and disabled dates so malicious users could manipulate the DOM and enter out-of-range values; now the validity of date values is also enforced server-side;
• fixed a bug where the placeholder, if the element had margins, would not be correctly positioned; thanks to Faton Sopa;
• fixed a bug where having elements with names representing array properties in JavaScript (length, constructor, prototype) would result in error messages not showing for that particular element in client-side validation;
• fixed a bug which I thought it was fixed in 2.8.3 regarding the order in which rules are checked;
• fixed a bug where when having “validate_on_the_fly” for client-side validation and moving away from a date control without selecting a date, would correctly show the error tip with the message, but the error would not automatically go away when selecting date, and the user would manually need to hide the error message;
• fixed a bug in the CSS affecting notes placed after a date control on Internet Explorer 7;
• fixed a bug where when using placeholders for textareas the “resize” icon (on browsers that automatically place it on textareas) would appear twice; thanks to Andrei Bodeanschi
• fixed a bug where having an error message on select control with the “other” option selected, the error message would not automatically disappear once the “other” field was filled out;
• fixed a WebKit-specific issue where Chrome & Safari seem to get it wrong for password fields when using various font families, and display really small dots instead of the discs that appear for every other browser – now WebKit browsers will behave as expected;
• updated Zebra_DatePicker to version 1.6.4;

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• fixed a bug where the library would think that an & directly before a character is an HTML entity, and would incorrectly insert a semicolon after the “entity”; thanks to Arne Tarara
• fixed a bug where for PHP versions prior to 5.2.0 the library would trigger an error when trying to set the CSRF cookie; thanks to hector;
• fixed a bug where custom arguments were never actually passed to custom rules; thanks to Andreas;
• fixed a bug where in PHP versions before 5.3 using a hyphen (dash) as among the extra allowed characters in the “alphabet”, “alphanumeric”, “float”, “digits”, “number”, rule would crash the script; thanks to Andreas
• fixed an issue where a hack was needed in order for displaying SPAM or CSRF errors in custom templates; now a new $zf_error variable will be available in custom templates which will display these errors (in the same way as it errors are displayed after server-side validation); see an example in the documentation (the second code block); thanks to Thomas;
• fixed an issue where assigning custom classes to elements upon adding them to the form (through the add() method) would break those elements as the custom class would replace the classes added by the library; the solution was to add custom classes through the set_attributes() method; now adding custom classes directly via the add() method will work as expected; thanks to Wim;
• fixed a bug when reporting some internal errors;
• added a new validation rule: “url” which validates URLs; see the documentation for more information;
• inverted the order of the first two arguments of the csrf() method – if you are using the method, make sure you update the arguments order after updating Zebra_Form!
• minor performance tweaks in the PHP code
• updated Spanish language file; thanks to Delegado 3iti
• updated Zebra_DatePicker to version 1.6.1

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• fixed a bug with the file upload control where client-side validation would correctly report an invalid upload path *only* if the “required” rule was also set; now, when uploading a file, the library will check if the upload path exists even if the “required” rule is not set; thanks to Jan;
• fixed a bug where if the form was validated and submitted manually through JavaScript, the library would validate the form twice; also, updated the recommended way of doing manual form validation and submission – see documentaion;
• fixed an issue where no custom HTML attributes (like “style”, for example) could be set for the select boxes generated by the Time control; thanks to Faton Sopa;
• custom date pickers can now also be used; to disable the default date picker you’ll have to call the newly added disable_zebra_datepicker() method available for “date” elements; date format, direction and disabled dates will still apply and will be taken into account when validating the date, but the other properties will be ignored as are specific to Zebra_DatePicker; thanks to Faton Sopa for suggesting;
• better error handling and documentation for when the library is trying to use cookies for storing the CSRF token, but output was already sent to the browser prior to instantiating the library, and output buffering is turned off in php.ini;
• in previous versions, when using “horizontal” templates and, thus, tables, I was using the deprecated “valign” attribute on table cells and so the generated output was not valid HTML5; now it is handled from CSS by using “vertical-align”; thanks to Andreas;
• additions and corrections to the documentation; thanks to Jan for spotting some errors!