What’s New in MathJax v1.1

MathJax version 1.1 includes a number of important improvements and enhancements over version 1.0. We have worked hard to fix bugs, improve support for browsers and mobile devices, supprot TeX and MathML better, and increase MathJax’s performance.

In addition to these changes, MathJax.org now offers MathJax as a network service. Instead of having to install MathJax on your own server, you can link to our content delivery network (CDN) to get fast access to up-to-date and past versions of MathJax. See Loading MathJax from the CDN for more details.

The following sections outline the changes in v1.1:

Optimization

• Combined configuraiton files that load all the needed files in one piece rather than loading them individually. This simplifies configuration and speeds up typsetting of the mathematics on the page.
• Improved responsiveness to mouse events during typesetting.
• Parallel downloading of files needed by MathJax, for faster startup times.
• Shorter timeout for web fonts, so if they can’t be downlaoded, you don’t have to wait so long.
• Rollover to image fonts if a web font fails to load (so you don’t have to wait for every font to fail.
• The MathJax files are now packed only with yuicompressor rather than a custom compressor. The CDN serves gzipped versions, which compressed better than the gzipped custom-packed files.
• Improved rendering speed in IE by removing position:relative from the style for mathematics.
• Improve rendering speed for most browsers by isolating the mathematics from page during typesetting (avoids full page reflows).

Enhancements

• Allow the input and output jax configuration blocks to specify extensions to be loaded when the jax is loaded (this avoids needing to load them up front, so they don’t have to be loaded on pages that don’t include mathematics, for example).
• Better handling of background color from style attributes.
• Ability to pass configuration parameters via script URL.
• Support HTML5 compliant configuration syntax.
• Switch the Git repository from storing the fonts in fonts.zip to storing the fonts/ directory directly.
• Improved About box.
• add a minimum scaling factor (so math won’t get too small)

TeX Support

• Added support for \href, \style, \class, \cssId.
• Avoid recursive macro definitions and other resource consumption possibilities.
• Fix for \underline bug.
• Fix for bug with \fbox.
• Fix height problem with \raise and \lower.
• Fix problem with \over used inside array entries.
• Fix problem with nesting of math delimiters inside text-mode material.
• Fix single digit super- and subscripts followed by punctuation.
• Make sure movablelimits is off for \underline and related macros.
• Fix problem with dimensions given with pc units.

MathML Support

• Fix < and & being translated too early.
• Handle self-closing tags in HTML files better.
• Combine adjacent relational operators in <mo> tags.
• Fix entity name problems.
• Better support for MathML namespaces.
• Properly handle comments within MathML in IE.
• Properly consider <mspace> and <mtext> as space-like.
• Improved support for <maction> with embelished operators.

Other Bug Fixes

• Fixed CSS bleed through with zoom and other situations.
• Fixed problems with showMathMenuMSIE when set to false.
• Replaced illegal prefix characters in cookie name.
• Improve placement of surd for square roots and n-th roots.
• Fixed layer obscuring math from MathPlayer for screen readers.
• Newlines in CDATA comments are now handled properly.
• Resolved conflict between jsMath2jax and tex2jax both processing the same equation.
• Fixed problem with class="tex2jax_ignore" affecting the processing of sibling elements.

Browser Support

Android

• Added detection and configuration for Android browser.
• Allow use of OTF web fonts in Android 2.2.

Blackberry

• MathJax now works with OS version 6.

Chrome

• Use OTF web fonts rather than SVG fonts for version 4 and above.

Firefox

• Added Firefox 4 detection and configuration.
• Fix for extra line-break bug when displayed equations are in preformatted text.
• Update fonts so that FF 3.6.13 and above can read them.

Internet Explorer

• Changes for compatibility with IE9.
• Fix for IE8 incorrectly parsing MathML.
• Fix for IE8 namespace problem.
• Fix for null parentNode problem.
• Fix for outerHTML not quoting values of attributes.

iPhone/iPad

• Add support for OTF web fonts in iOS4.2.

Nokia

• MathJax now works with Symbian³.

Opera

• Prevent Opera from using STIX fonts unless explicitly requested via the font menu (since Opera can’t display many of the characters).
• Fix for bad em-size detection in 10.61.
• Fixed a problem with the About dialog in Opera 11.

Safari

• Use OTF web fonts for Safari/PC.

WebKit

• Better version detection.