This patch adds the ability to call the sortable_element helper without the :url parameter. This can be useful if you want to handle the order update yourself and avoid calls to a remote action each time the sort order changes. Example:
<%= sortable_element("my_list", :handle => "my_handle" ) %>
If you try to do something like this in the edge version it won't work but used to in 1.2.X.
Looking for advice or +1 
http://dev.rubyonrails.org/ticket/10813