Just a quick note that Knockout 2.2 is now available. You can read more about the details of this release in the announcement or Steve Sanderson’s blog post.

Here are a few of my favorite changes:

• The css binding can either toggle specific classes on and off like (css: { error: hasError, required: isRequired }) or now add one or more classes dynamically like css: someClassOrClasses. This is handy when the class names are dynamic. Previously, you could do something similar with the attr binding against the class attribute, but it would overwrite the class attribute completely. When using the css binding in this way, it will now preserve existing classes and will properly remove any class or classes that were previously added by the binding when the value changes.
• The if and ifnot bindings now only re-render their contents when the bound value changes between truthy and falsy. This helps to alleviate the performance issue described in the first half of this post.
• There is a new peek function available on observables and computed observables. This allows you to retrieve its value without creating a dependency. This definitely can be useful when you want tight control over when bindings and other subscriptions are triggered, but I would use caution as it does circumvent the normal dependency tracking mechanism. If you find that you need this functionality, then you probably have a good reason why you don’t want a dependency and would understand what does and doesn’t trigger updates.
• The foreach binding and the foreach option of the template binding now try to understand if items have been moved and will relocate the content rather than tearing it down and re-rendering it at its new position. This comes with some new callbacks (beforeMove and afterMove).
• The ko variable is now available from within bindings, even if ko is not a global variable (common in AMD scenarios).

You can download the 2.2 files from here. There were no intentional breaking changes made in 2.2 (unless someone was relying on an existing bug), so if you have any issues with your application not behaving as it did in 2.1, please log an issue here.