4 ms·

This is a welcome change. Considering the market share of IE 6, 7 and 8 is pretty minuscule and Google dropping support for IE8 back in November 2012 should be

This is a welcome change. Considering the market share of IE 6, 7 and 8 is pretty minuscule and Google dropping support for IE8 back in November 2012 should be cause enough to drop it from jQuery too. It's great to hear they'll be supporting the older 1.9 branch for users who need to support older versions of IE as not everyone has the luxury of being able to ditch older versions of IE like that. There's no cause for concern here, the jQuery team covered their bases well and lets face it, there aren't many open source projects out there that drop support for older versions of something like a browser and then commit to continue to support an older branch for a lengthy amount of time.

hobbes78 14y ago
Is 31.37% pretty minuscule? I don't think so... Source: http://www.netmarketshare.com/ http://www.netmarketshare.com/
- colmvp 14y ago
  It is if your customer base are comprised of very few IE users.
- nbouscal 14y ago
  As best I can see on the site you linked, IE8 is 23.23%. That also disagrees significantly with this source: http://caniuse.com/usage_table.php http://caniuse.com/usage_table.php where IE8 is 8.89%
- DigitalSea 14y ago
  You combined all aforementioned versions of IE together to yield that result: http://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=2&qpcustomd=0 http://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qpri... — even combined the market share is still in my opinion minuscule. The only browser with a substantial market share is IE 8 which according to the site has a market share of 23%, it's not even worth adding in those other percentages on-top to try and make it seem as though a lot of people still use those browsers. 31% is not justification enough to maintain legacy code in a library that has become a little bloated over the years because of the backwards compatibility with older browsers. If you want to support that 31%, use the 1.9 branch it's better than the alternative being no support whatsoever. Edit: Why all of the down-votes, is my response offensive?
  - crdoconnor 14y ago
    >Edit: Why all of the down-votes, is my response offensive? Because you described "1/3 of the internet" as "a miniscule proportion of ones' users", probably.
    - DigitalSea 14y ago
      Then shouldn't my original comment be the one that gets down-voted which is where I originally said IE's market share is minuscule, not my response to someone else's comment? I standby what I said. Considering Google does not support versions of IE below 9, Google too deems 1/3 of the Internet to be a minuscule proportion of users if they're fine dropping support.
      - pbreit 14y ago
        Your continuing to call 20-30% "minuscule" is more egregious, IMO.
      - mkopinsky 14y ago
        Your first comment can be excused as ignorance. Now you're being willfully stupid.
- ricardobeat 14y ago
  Statcounter[1] puts IE8 at ~10%, 12% for the US[2]. In some markets it's even lower[3]. This matches what I see from non-tech client websites. For anything related to software, IE as a whole is close to zero. StatCounter tracks 3 million websites vs 40k for NetMarketShare. [1] http://gs.statcounter.com/ http://gs.statcounter.com/ [2] http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version_partially_combined-US-monthly-201203-201303 http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version_partially_combine... [3] http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version_partially_combined-BR-monthly-201203-201303 http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version_partially_combine...
  - rorrr 14y ago
    In any case, if you can afford to drop 10% of your audience, you're not in a serious business.
- b3tta 14y ago
  10.29% worldwide according to: http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww-monthly-201203-201303 http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww-monthly-201203... Well one of the websites I'm working on is a fairly big one in germany and only about 4% of all visitors are using IE8 or below. Guess what! We now only support IE9+.
- democracy 14y ago
  At my work (big data analytics for banks) we still have major customers using IE 6. We had to support 5.5 a few years back! If you think about it, there is no real reason not to support old browsers, unless you are in online gaming, of course.

hobbes78 14y ago

Is 31.37% pretty minuscule? I don't think so... Source: http://www.netmarketshare.com/ http://www.netmarketshare.com/

colmvp 14y ago
It is if your customer base are comprised of very few IE users.
nbouscal 14y ago
As best I can see on the site you linked, IE8 is 23.23%. That also disagrees significantly with this source: http://caniuse.com/usage_table.php http://caniuse.com/usage_table.php where IE8 is 8.89%
DigitalSea 14y ago
You combined all aforementioned versions of IE together to yield that result: http://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=2&qpcustomd=0 http://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qpri... — even combined the market share is still in my opinion minuscule. The only browser with a substantial market share is IE 8 which according to the site has a market share of 23%, it's not even worth adding in those other percentages on-top to try and make it seem as though a lot of people still use those browsers. 31% is not justification enough to maintain legacy code in a library that has become a little bloated over the years because of the backwards compatibility with older browsers. If you want to support that 31%, use the 1.9 branch it's better than the alternative being no support whatsoever. Edit: Why all of the down-votes, is my response offensive?
- crdoconnor 14y ago
  >Edit: Why all of the down-votes, is my response offensive? Because you described "1/3 of the internet" as "a miniscule proportion of ones' users", probably.
  - DigitalSea 14y ago
    Then shouldn't my original comment be the one that gets down-voted which is where I originally said IE's market share is minuscule, not my response to someone else's comment? I standby what I said. Considering Google does not support versions of IE below 9, Google too deems 1/3 of the Internet to be a minuscule proportion of users if they're fine dropping support.
    - pbreit 14y ago
      Your continuing to call 20-30% "minuscule" is more egregious, IMO.
    - mkopinsky 14y ago
      Your first comment can be excused as ignorance. Now you're being willfully stupid.
ricardobeat 14y ago
Statcounter[1] puts IE8 at ~10%, 12% for the US[2]. In some markets it's even lower[3]. This matches what I see from non-tech client websites. For anything related to software, IE as a whole is close to zero. StatCounter tracks 3 million websites vs 40k for NetMarketShare. [1] http://gs.statcounter.com/ http://gs.statcounter.com/ [2] http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version_partially_combined-US-monthly-201203-201303 http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version_partially_combine... [3] http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version_partially_combined-BR-monthly-201203-201303 http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version_partially_combine...
- rorrr 14y ago
  In any case, if you can afford to drop 10% of your audience, you're not in a serious business.
b3tta 14y ago
10.29% worldwide according to: http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww-monthly-201203-201303 http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww-monthly-201203... Well one of the websites I'm working on is a fairly big one in germany and only about 4% of all visitors are using IE8 or below. Guess what! We now only support IE9+.
democracy 14y ago
At my work (big data analytics for banks) we still have major customers using IE 6. We had to support 5.5 a few years back! If you think about it, there is no real reason not to support old browsers, unless you are in online gaming, of course.