Earlier tonight I wanted to remove the ancient version of JQuery automatically loaded on the WordPress front end and replace it with the much speedier latest version (currently 1.4.2). This turned out to be more difficult than planned, however after a bit of scrounging I found the solution; add the following code to your template’s functions.php file:

if( !is_admin() )
{
	wp_deregister_script('jquery');
	//Add latest JQuery back into header. Comment this line out to remove JQuery alltogether
	wp_register_script('jquery', ("http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1/jquery.min.js"), false, '1.4.2');
	wp_enqueue_script('jquery');
}

Enjoy your blazingly fast JavaScript experience 🙂