just curious as to what the rationale was for changing the readyList array from a public property to a private variable with the 1.4 release. i realize that direct manipulation of the readyList could have some unexpected results, especially in team-based dev environments. with that being said, however, there are cases where direct manipulation of the readyList can be very helpful. consider the following:

i  work for a company with a huge site that uses third-party tracking/analytics software. the particular library we are using is filled with blocking-behavior. as we cannot remove/refactor the code at this time, prior to the 1.4 release i was able to replace a static script node, i.e:

1. <script src="path/to/trackinglib.js"></script>

with something much more elegant, and without the blocking (as the page is already loaded)

1. // Make sure the tracking code is added before any other dom-ready blocks run
   
2. $.readyList.unshift(function() {
3.         $.getScript("path/to/trackinglib.js");
4. })

arguably, this can still be achieved via:

1. $(function() {
2.         $.getScript("path/to/trackinglib.js");
3. })

but that approach has some significant drawbacks, like the fact that each independent author (page-specific code, widgets, plugins, etc) needs to implement a check for the tracking software and load it if necessary. i was using this approach on several pages, which allowed adding/removing/refactoring the various blocks of js on each page a breeze, as the individual blocks could assume that the software was always available.

can anyone shed some light on why this was done? i'm hoping there is a better answer than "well, that array is used internally so should not be publicly accessible" ... i agree with that sentiment but it is also a fairly drastic change to make. even if the ability to manipulate the readyList was never documented or intended, it was available nonetheless, which leads me to claim regression.