I found an (unintended?) change in how 1.4 works:

.show('')

In <1.4 this triggered the default 'show' with no animation.
In 1.4, this causes an animated 'show'.

This can be fixed by removing the empty-string argument, but I thought I would post it here in case anyone else comes across this problem.

Matt Kruse
http://MattKruse.com