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I think what a lot of people are upset about here, is jQuery entered the web development scene as "the library that solved cross-browser compatibility issues".

I think what a lot of people are upset about here, is jQuery entered the web development scene as "the library that solved cross-browser compatibility issues". Now while IE 6 is an obvious one to drop, IE 7 is a little tougher, and IE 8 is down right impossible to drop at this time. I understand that jQuery wants to promote a modern framework, but people didn't adopt it for it's fancy features. They adopted it because those fancy features worked the same in every major browser . The stop gap solution of 1.9 as being parallel to 2.0 but with compatibility, is understandable, but will probably promote distrust in developers who just need a stable cross-platform solution. I think the immediate concern with 1.9, is how long it will continue in parallel with 2.x before being dropped

spicyj 13y ago
I don't think that's true. There were a handful of competing libraries (Prototype.js, Mootools, etc) and jQuery won out because people seemed to prefer its API.
- chollida1 13y ago
  Only one data point here, but we originally chose jquery for browser compatibility support and I know we're not alone:) The rest of jquery was just gravy.
- speg 13y ago
  I can only speak for myself, but IMO jQuery won because of their docs. I seem to remember having a hell of a time trying to get MooTools to work in the summer of '06, and finding docs to be of no help.
  - nbouscal 13y ago
    People underestimate just how important jQuery's documentation has been to its success. Even jQuery themselves seem to underestimate it, because the documentation for jQuery UI and jQuery Mobile really are not as good as the core docs (though still far better than the average). I probably would not have started using jQuery for my projects nearly as soon or as often had it not been for the excellent documentation.
  - timv 13y ago
    Likewise, I ditched Dojo for jQuery because of the docs.
dmethvin 13y ago
Sorry if I seem cranky, but did you READ the blog post? jQuery 1.9 supports those browsers and the jQuery team still supports it. Do you have a problem with us supporting a second version that can be smaller, faster, and work in places other than obsolete browsers?
- philh 13y ago
  It looks to me like he's worried (or saying that other people are/might be worried) about how long 1.9 will continue to be supported for.
  - jhack 13y ago
    From the post: "...we’ve got jQuery 1.x to handle older browsers and fully expect to support it for several more years."
    - philh 13y ago
      I skimmed to see if they'd already addressed that, but apparently I missed it. Thanks.
    - gcr 13y ago
      Exactly. What does "several" mean? Are we talking two years? Five? A decade? Until jQuery changes their minds?
      - Andrex 13y ago
        How relevant will IE8 be in just two years, though? If it's 3-5 which is what it sounds like, then that's just more of a nail in the coffin for IE8 support.
        dspillett 13y ago
        > How relevant will IE8 be in just two years, though? That very much depends on your target audience. For home users IE8 is pretty much dead already, the only subset of people stuck there are the few who are using XP and have not switched to Firefox/Chrome/other. As more and more game-y things on the web start demanding newer features rather than creating/using/supporting fallback options for IE8 (canvas in particular). In more corporate environments, IE8 is often still king and will be for several years. Most of the clients for the product I spend most of the working day panel beating are large banks and most of them have only just migrated to IE8 from IE6 because they have to soon (IE6 falls out of extended support in less than 12 months, along with XP+sp3). If they follow the same pattern (and I see little reason why they won't, slow moving mammoths that they are) I and many others will have to be concerned about IE8 until at least 2018 as IE8 falls out of extended support in 2020 (as it's support windows are tied to Windows 7's). Hopefully jQuery's idea of "several years" is as least as long as this.
jacob019 13y ago
I think it's great. No one is forcing anyone to upgrade, jQuery 1.9 is stable and you can use it forever even with new browsers. So what if it's not supported after some unknown date in the future. It's solid and will keep on working. No one is forcing developers to switch, but in my case I don't want my users using older versions of IE. We develop apps for in-house use, and breaking old insecure browsers is a good thing, it promotes user upgrades. A smaller jQuery is great, as it will reduce load times a bit. I couldn't be happier with the decision.
jeresig 13y ago
I don't work on jQuery any more but I (and I know many others on the jQuery team) all build web sites as part of their day jobs (and, thus, need to continuing supporting IE 8). It's going to be a very long time before support for the 1.x branch is dropped. But hopefully soon, death of IE 8 willing.
- angersock 13y ago
  Is there any list of companies that currently require old versions of IE? I know a lot of hospitals do, and people handwave banks and whatnot. If there was a big list of "These people still use old versions of IE", then we could: A. Properly shame/advertise for attack/avoid getting work from these people. B. Expose a dedicated market audience for compatibility-minded dev shops Either of these would seem to be a Good Thing (tm), and would help remove a lot of the FUD in the ecosystem.
  - ismarc 13y ago
    You're missing an important part of this. There's a large number of companies whose web capabilities need to support people who use their website while working at the companies that have older versions of IE. The company I'm with has embedded video players on a large number of web retailer's pages (we're hiring a javascript+flash developer in Austin, TX right now, particularly around video players. If you're interested, drop me a line) and a significant portion of them have requirements to support IE6 or IE7 with analytics that back up the need based on percentage of their traffic and conversions from those users. However, I (not speaking for the company, just me personally) strongly disagree with the focus on "identical experience" amongst browsers. Instead, I prefer the route of graceful degradation where not all features may be available for all browsers, but it's fully functional and aesthetically pleasing (not necessarily identical) in all browsers. That being said, not all companies have the same browser support requirements...it's entirely based around what the site's individual traffic and conversion rates are.
    - angersock 13y ago
      There's a large number of companies whose web capabilities need to support people who use their website while working at the companies that have older versions of IE. Like who? Honest question. I know that not all users currently have modern browsers (which is total bullshit, by the way--with free, open-source browsers as well as Chrome and the like, there is no excuse for this) but this isn't something we should treat as anything but detestable and fixable. As for "identical experience", I will have to disagree. I have no problem with gracefully degrading sites due to screen size or compute power, but there is no reason that desktop browsers should be permitted to render things differently from one another (and if the spec is ambiguous, we should fix the damn spec). Developers are lazy, or shortsighted, or both, and given the option of "Hey, works on my machine/browser/whatever", we should expect only annoying fragmentation.
ricardobeat 13y ago
IE7 is almost dead, falling below 1% almost everywhere, and IE8 is dying a quick death. Google dropped support for IE < 9 on all it's webapps in November 2012.
wiremine 13y ago
If the only issue is IE 6, 7 and 8 marketshare, then the question becomes: how long will IE8 have a sizable portion of the market. Here's a graph of the browser market over the last 3 years (typical disclaimer about lies, damn lies and statistics, and measure your own traffic, etc.) http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version_partially_combined-ww-monthly-201003-201303 http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version_partially_combine... Assuming the above graph is relatively close to the truth, IE8 is around 10% of the worldwide marketshare. So, the question is: when does a library like jQuery drop support? 10% marketshare, 5%, 2%, 1%? At what point is the overhead outweigh the benefits? Obviously there are some developers who need to support IE7 (for example), regardless of the overall market. I personally don't think that should be the approach for tools like jQuery: time is valuable, and they should target the largest possible market possible.

spicyj 13y ago

I don't think that's true. There were a handful of competing libraries (Prototype.js, Mootools, etc) and jQuery won out because people seemed to prefer its API.

chollida1 13y ago
Only one data point here, but we originally chose jquery for browser compatibility support and I know we're not alone:) The rest of jquery was just gravy.
speg 13y ago
I can only speak for myself, but IMO jQuery won because of their docs. I seem to remember having a hell of a time trying to get MooTools to work in the summer of '06, and finding docs to be of no help.
- nbouscal 13y ago
  People underestimate just how important jQuery's documentation has been to its success. Even jQuery themselves seem to underestimate it, because the documentation for jQuery UI and jQuery Mobile really are not as good as the core docs (though still far better than the average). I probably would not have started using jQuery for my projects nearly as soon or as often had it not been for the excellent documentation.
- timv 13y ago
  Likewise, I ditched Dojo for jQuery because of the docs.

dmethvin 13y ago

Sorry if I seem cranky, but did you READ the blog post? jQuery 1.9 supports those browsers and the jQuery team still supports it. Do you have a problem with us supporting a second version that can be smaller, faster, and work in places other than obsolete browsers?

philh 13y ago
It looks to me like he's worried (or saying that other people are/might be worried) about how long 1.9 will continue to be supported for.
- jhack 13y ago
  From the post: "...we’ve got jQuery 1.x to handle older browsers and fully expect to support it for several more years."
  - philh 13y ago
    I skimmed to see if they'd already addressed that, but apparently I missed it. Thanks.
  - gcr 13y ago
    Exactly. What does "several" mean? Are we talking two years? Five? A decade? Until jQuery changes their minds?
    - Andrex 13y ago
      How relevant will IE8 be in just two years, though? If it's 3-5 which is what it sounds like, then that's just more of a nail in the coffin for IE8 support.
      - dspillett 13y ago
        > How relevant will IE8 be in just two years, though? That very much depends on your target audience. For home users IE8 is pretty much dead already, the only subset of people stuck there are the few who are using XP and have not switched to Firefox/Chrome/other. As more and more game-y things on the web start demanding newer features rather than creating/using/supporting fallback options for IE8 (canvas in particular). In more corporate environments, IE8 is often still king and will be for several years. Most of the clients for the product I spend most of the working day panel beating are large banks and most of them have only just migrated to IE8 from IE6 because they have to soon (IE6 falls out of extended support in less than 12 months, along with XP+sp3). If they follow the same pattern (and I see little reason why they won't, slow moving mammoths that they are) I and many others will have to be concerned about IE8 until at least 2018 as IE8 falls out of extended support in 2020 (as it's support windows are tied to Windows 7's). Hopefully jQuery's idea of "several years" is as least as long as this.

jacob019 13y ago

I think it's great. No one is forcing anyone to upgrade, jQuery 1.9 is stable and you can use it forever even with new browsers. So what if it's not supported after some unknown date in the future. It's solid and will keep on working. No one is forcing developers to switch, but in my case I don't want my users using older versions of IE. We develop apps for in-house use, and breaking old insecure browsers is a good thing, it promotes user upgrades. A smaller jQuery is great, as it will reduce load times a bit. I couldn't be happier with the decision.

jeresig 13y ago

I don't work on jQuery any more but I (and I know many others on the jQuery team) all build web sites as part of their day jobs (and, thus, need to continuing supporting IE 8). It's going to be a very long time before support for the 1.x branch is dropped. But hopefully soon, death of IE 8 willing.

angersock 13y ago
Is there any list of companies that currently require old versions of IE? I know a lot of hospitals do, and people handwave banks and whatnot. If there was a big list of "These people still use old versions of IE", then we could: A. Properly shame/advertise for attack/avoid getting work from these people. B. Expose a dedicated market audience for compatibility-minded dev shops Either of these would seem to be a Good Thing (tm), and would help remove a lot of the FUD in the ecosystem.
- ismarc 13y ago
  You're missing an important part of this. There's a large number of companies whose web capabilities need to support people who use their website while working at the companies that have older versions of IE. The company I'm with has embedded video players on a large number of web retailer's pages (we're hiring a javascript+flash developer in Austin, TX right now, particularly around video players. If you're interested, drop me a line) and a significant portion of them have requirements to support IE6 or IE7 with analytics that back up the need based on percentage of their traffic and conversions from those users. However, I (not speaking for the company, just me personally) strongly disagree with the focus on "identical experience" amongst browsers. Instead, I prefer the route of graceful degradation where not all features may be available for all browsers, but it's fully functional and aesthetically pleasing (not necessarily identical) in all browsers. That being said, not all companies have the same browser support requirements...it's entirely based around what the site's individual traffic and conversion rates are.
  - angersock 13y ago
    There's a large number of companies whose web capabilities need to support people who use their website while working at the companies that have older versions of IE. Like who? Honest question. I know that not all users currently have modern browsers (which is total bullshit, by the way--with free, open-source browsers as well as Chrome and the like, there is no excuse for this) but this isn't something we should treat as anything but detestable and fixable. As for "identical experience", I will have to disagree. I have no problem with gracefully degrading sites due to screen size or compute power, but there is no reason that desktop browsers should be permitted to render things differently from one another (and if the spec is ambiguous, we should fix the damn spec). Developers are lazy, or shortsighted, or both, and given the option of "Hey, works on my machine/browser/whatever", we should expect only annoying fragmentation.

ricardobeat 13y ago

IE7 is almost dead, falling below 1% almost everywhere, and IE8 is dying a quick death. Google dropped support for IE < 9 on all it's webapps in November 2012.

wiremine 13y ago

If the only issue is IE 6, 7 and 8 marketshare, then the question becomes: how long will IE8 have a sizable portion of the market. Here's a graph of the browser market over the last 3 years (typical disclaimer about lies, damn lies and statistics, and measure your own traffic, etc.) http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version_partially_combined-ww-monthly-201003-201303 http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version_partially_combine... Assuming the above graph is relatively close to the truth, IE8 is around 10% of the worldwide marketshare. So, the question is: when does a library like jQuery drop support? 10% marketshare, 5%, 2%, 1%? At what point is the overhead outweigh the benefits? Obviously there are some developers who need to support IE7 (for example), regardless of the overall market. I personally don't think that should be the approach for tools like jQuery: time is valuable, and they should target the largest possible market possible.