Hi!

After upgrading from jQuery 1.8.0 to 1.8.1 simple $("a:first").click(); (or any other ID element or class based selector) takes ~400ms (measured in Chrome and Firefox using console.time() and console.timeEnd()).

I figured out it's related to binding two live events in our application:

$('[data-dialog=message][data-recipient!=""]').live('click', function(e) {/*body - doesn't affect response time*/});

and

$('[class~="layer"][data-dialog!=""]').live('click', function(e){/*body*/});

When I remove those two pieces of code above

$("a:first").click();

When I downgrade to 1.8.0 above code works nice and responds in less than 40ms. 400ms is too much for UX (everything looks slow).