6 ms·
The cycle here is pretty long: jQuery 2.0 will be released in "Early 2013". For some time (probably at least 6 months if not longer), jQuery 1.9 and 2.x will b
by wycats 14y ago
The cycle here is pretty long:
jQuery 2.0 will be released in "Early 2013". For some time (probably at least 6 months if not longer), jQuery 1.9 and 2.x will be perfectly API compatible. That means that the conditional comment approach will work with very little downside.
That gets us to summer or Fall 2013. At this point, there may be a release of jQuery 2.1. According to the blog post, it will probably contain few new features, and some speed improvements. It will almost certainly not break backwards API compatibility. At this point, you can upgrade to jQuery 2.1 for the speed improvements and simply not use the new features. The conditional comment approach will still work.
That gets us to Spring 2014. At this point, Microsoft will EOL Windows XP. It's frankly hard for me to imagine more than a tiny number of Windows XP users using IE8 at this point. There was a lot of similar-sounding concern about IE6, which has mercifully vanished. IE8 was at 30% last November; it is now down to 15%.
Even at this point, a jQuery 2.2 will likely not break API backwards compatibility. If IE8 clingers are more stubborn than we expect, we can always modify the strategy to be more aggressive about strict compatibility between the branches.
Unfortunately, many of us are still fighting the last war, where the cutting edge (IE6->IE7) was plodding and the slow upgrading tail was huge. It's time that we acknowledged that the ecosystem has changed: the slow upgrading tail grows smaller all the time, as the cutting edge absorbs more of the mindless browser population. At the same time, the pace of the cutting edge grows faster and faster. We aren't quite there yet, but we should prepare for a future that is not a simple clone of the 2004-2008 era of browser development.
- tambourine_man 14y agoAt the same time, the pace of the cutting edge grows faster and faster. It better grow pretty fast. By late 2012, jQuery will still be supporting a browser released in 2001 but by early 2013 it won't support a browser that was only replaced by MS in 2011. Corporate America is not IE8's only domain. There are a lot of people who don't even know what a browser is. And IE8 was the default browser on Windows 7.
- jlarocco 14y agoYou know what? At this point I'm not sure it's worth catering to people who "don't even know what a browser is." They've had nearly 20 years to hop on the bandwagon and start understanding this crazy "internet" thing, and they haven't. A person that behind the times isn't going to buy anything on the internet anyway.
- MatthewPhillips 14y agoYou shouldn't assume that everyone with money or education shares all of the same interests as you.
- trafficlight 14y agoI can't imagine the internet is very useful or fun for those people either. Every other site must be broken in some way. And that's still not enough for them to ask someone about it.
- DougWebb 14y agoThat's what they call "The Internet". They may wonder why everyone else likes it so much, or they like it well enough as they see it that they're not even aware of what they're missing. I'm not much of a car guy, but I like my car just fine. Someone who's really into cars and has test-driven hundreds of them could probably point out dozens of deficiencies in my car and the way I drive it that I'm totally oblivious to. He might not like my car at all, but I'm happy with it and see no reason to 'upgrade' it. Same goes for any other product field, hobby, interest, etc. People who are more interested are better acquainted with what's available and the way to get the best experience, and people who are less interested are happy enough with their point of view and oblivious to any short-comings.
- mgkimsal 14y agoit's not always just about buying. having information accessible to people is... generally... a good goal to have.
- eli 14y agoThat works fine for your blog, but what percentage of customers are you willing to turn away from your web business?
- 46Bit 14y agoYou're comparing apples to oranges. A more correct assertion: By late 2012, jQuery will still be supporting a browser replaced by MS in 2006 but by early 2013 it won't support a browser that was only replaced by MS in 2011. It's still a valid point, but comparing release dates with replacement dates just hurts the whole argument.
- tambourine_man 14y agoYou are right. Probably the best way would have been: By late 2012, jQuery will still be supporting a browser released in 2001 but by early 2013 it won't support a browser that was released in 2009.
- vlad 14y agojQuery 1.x supports all Microsoft browsers released over the past 11 years, while jQuery 2.x will only support Microsoft browsers released a little over a year before today.
- yuhong 14y agoAnd MS will technically support IE8 for Win7 with security updates till 2020 for the same reason IE6 on XP is still supported until 2014 (and IE 5.01 on Win2000 was supported until 2010).
- yuhong 14y agoI think it is MS's fault for taking years to speed up pace of browser development. DOM2 (important for jQuery) and XHTML are at least 10 years old now, and both are not supported by IE8 and took until IE9 to support.
- ttt_ 14y ago>> And IE8 was the default browser on Windows 7. Hasn't Microsoft decided to auto-update IE? In that case, most people who don't know what a browser is will already be using IE9 on Windows 7 by 2013 or is there reason to believe otherwise?
- mtts 14y agoYes. IE9 was an optional update.