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Serious question. Please hit me with a clue stick. Regarding 1.9, how can "old-IE compatibility often causes problems of its own" and "simplest way to support

Serious question. Please hit me with a clue stick. Regarding 1.9, how can "old-IE compatibility often causes problems of its own" and "simplest way to support older browsers is to use jQuery 1.x on your site, since it works for all browsers." both be true at one and the same time?

epmatsw 14y ago
Keeping old-IE compatibility prevents some optimizations and makes the code have to do extra checks, but using one file that supports it is simpler than using two files?
- igravious 14y ago
  Ok, so the problems it causes are pain points for the jQuery devs and not for website devs? Also, the underlying code is more complex and lacks optimizations? Until old drops off the radar completely we'll have to use 1.9 solely or do a conditional check and serve the suitable version - serving 1.9 seems simpler ^^, call me lazy, many have,
  - apendleton 14y ago
    Depends what you're doing. If you're building a mobile app (particularly one meant to be distributed via PhoneGap), or a Chrome extension, maybe you don't care about IE support.
  - kaeawc 14y ago
    Its also a pain for every website serving jQuery because of increased data for every single page load. Cutting out the support for old IE should also help with performance.
  - dmethvin 14y ago
    Not dumb at all. Keep using 1.x for everything until IE 6/7/8 drop off your radar.
themgt 14y ago
This is one of the biggest projects on the web leading the way in throwing shitty old IE under the bus to help push the modern web forward. They're going to keep big-fixing 1.X so people stuck with IE6/7/8 can keep supporting it, but moving forward with 2.x for modern browsers makes their lives easier in the long run, and provides yet another coffin nail in Microsoft's attempt decade-old attempt to break the web.
- oneeyedpigeon 14y ago
  Third parties have been trying to throw shitty old IE under the bus for a long, long time and haven't had much success in doing so. I fear jQuery 2.0 will see very low take-up on mainstream sites, and the resulting fork will be tricky to manage.
  - svachalek 14y ago
    People said that for the longest time about IE6, then Google just did it and boom, after the fact it was about as (un)devastating as the Y2K problem. Not that jQuery has the same kind of power but you can't ask people to move forward nicely, you have to drag them kicking and screaming.
  - coldtea 14y ago
    >Third parties have been trying to throw shitty old IE under the bus for a long, long time and haven't had much success in doing so. On the contrary. Lots of big volume mainstream websites (including even Google properties) have stopped supporting IE6 and some even IE7 for years. For IE6 it has been at least 4 years since most sites stopped caring about it. (Heck, even Microsoft created a site to convince people to drop IE6 it last year). Mainstream websites will move much faster off of IE8. It's enterprise shops and people making software or websites targeted at them that will take the longest.
    - oneeyedpigeon 14y ago
      True, but it took a LONG time - IEs 6 and 7 were released in 2001 and 2006 respectively, so assuming your '4 years ago' stat is correct, that's still 3 years of waiting for a sweet spot of upgrades, by which time IE6 was 8 YEARS old. IE7 still gives me enough traffic (~5%) to require support, so that's a total of 4 active versions I need to cater for. I really hope adoption of latest IE speeds up, but I've been hoping that for a while now, and I just don't see it. Given that XP introduces a cut-off on IE8, I doubt we'll see the situation changing for a while.
dmethvin 14y ago
There's a difference between working as a web page in all browsers and working in all HTML-rendering environments such as the ones listed in the bullet points in the blog. For example, Windows 8 apps or Chrome add-ons have additional security restrictions on .innerHTML.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
AshleysBrain 14y ago
old-IE compatibility causes problems with the other non-browser platforms they list, e.g. Windows 8 apps, Firefox OS apps, Chrome OS apps, PhoneGap apps, BB10 apps, node.js, etc. For example Win8 apps using jQuery used to log an error on startup every time, probably because of some oldIE compatibility check which didn't work in the not-quite-a-browser environment.

epmatsw 14y ago

Keeping old-IE compatibility prevents some optimizations and makes the code have to do extra checks, but using one file that supports it is simpler than using two files?

igravious 14y ago
Ok, so the problems it causes are pain points for the jQuery devs and not for website devs? Also, the underlying code is more complex and lacks optimizations? Until old drops off the radar completely we'll have to use 1.9 solely or do a conditional check and serve the suitable version - serving 1.9 seems simpler ^^, call me lazy, many have,
- apendleton 14y ago
  Depends what you're doing. If you're building a mobile app (particularly one meant to be distributed via PhoneGap), or a Chrome extension, maybe you don't care about IE support.
- kaeawc 14y ago
  Its also a pain for every website serving jQuery because of increased data for every single page load. Cutting out the support for old IE should also help with performance.
- dmethvin 14y ago
  Not dumb at all. Keep using 1.x for everything until IE 6/7/8 drop off your radar.

themgt 14y ago

This is one of the biggest projects on the web leading the way in throwing shitty old IE under the bus to help push the modern web forward. They're going to keep big-fixing 1.X so people stuck with IE6/7/8 can keep supporting it, but moving forward with 2.x for modern browsers makes their lives easier in the long run, and provides yet another coffin nail in Microsoft's attempt decade-old attempt to break the web.

oneeyedpigeon 14y ago
Third parties have been trying to throw shitty old IE under the bus for a long, long time and haven't had much success in doing so. I fear jQuery 2.0 will see very low take-up on mainstream sites, and the resulting fork will be tricky to manage.
- svachalek 14y ago
  People said that for the longest time about IE6, then Google just did it and boom, after the fact it was about as (un)devastating as the Y2K problem. Not that jQuery has the same kind of power but you can't ask people to move forward nicely, you have to drag them kicking and screaming.
- coldtea 14y ago
  >Third parties have been trying to throw shitty old IE under the bus for a long, long time and haven't had much success in doing so. On the contrary. Lots of big volume mainstream websites (including even Google properties) have stopped supporting IE6 and some even IE7 for years. For IE6 it has been at least 4 years since most sites stopped caring about it. (Heck, even Microsoft created a site to convince people to drop IE6 it last year). Mainstream websites will move much faster off of IE8. It's enterprise shops and people making software or websites targeted at them that will take the longest.
  - oneeyedpigeon 14y ago
    True, but it took a LONG time - IEs 6 and 7 were released in 2001 and 2006 respectively, so assuming your '4 years ago' stat is correct, that's still 3 years of waiting for a sweet spot of upgrades, by which time IE6 was 8 YEARS old. IE7 still gives me enough traffic (~5%) to require support, so that's a total of 4 active versions I need to cater for. I really hope adoption of latest IE speeds up, but I've been hoping that for a while now, and I just don't see it. Given that XP introduces a cut-off on IE8, I doubt we'll see the situation changing for a while.

dmethvin 14y ago

There's a difference between working as a web page in all browsers and working in all HTML-rendering environments such as the ones listed in the bullet points in the blog. For example, Windows 8 apps or Chrome add-ons have additional security restrictions on .innerHTML.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

AshleysBrain 14y ago

old-IE compatibility causes problems with the other non-browser platforms they list, e.g. Windows 8 apps, Firefox OS apps, Chrome OS apps, PhoneGap apps, BB10 apps, node.js, etc. For example Win8 apps using jQuery used to log an error on startup every time, probably because of some oldIE compatibility check which didn't work in the not-quite-a-browser environment.