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jQuery 3.0 Stops Supporting Internet Explorer Workarounds (softpedia.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Thursday's release of jQuery 3.0 is "the first version that features absolutely no workarounds for old Internet Explorer browsers," reports Softpedia. "If customers are still asking you to work with IE6, IE7, and IE8, then you should stick with jQuery 1.0 for the foreseeable future." The jQuery blog explains that over 18 months of development, "We set out to create a slimmer, faster version of jQuery (with backwards compatibility in mind)... It is a continuation of the 2.x branch, but with a few breaking changes that we felt were long overdue." Besides jQuery's free, open source JavaScript library, they also released a "slim" version that excludes ajax and effects modules (as well as deprecated code), and a new version of the jQuery Migrate plugin.
Now they need the guts to stop supporting JavaScript.
So jQuery 3 is useless in the real world, then, since we need to support at least some of those browsers. Over 15% of my sites' users are using IE 8. I can't tell them to "fuck off" by using jQuery 3! Hell, I still get more IE 8 users than I get Firefox users.
jQuery 1 will be the only option for a very long time.
If customers are still asking you to work with IE6, IE7, and IE8, then you should stick them with a fork. They're done for.
Now, if Flash would finally go away...
If I'd wanted to read them then I'd read them there. Seriously, is copying half a dozen sites the best you can do?
Essentially, all jQuery has done is drop support for Internet Explorer on Windows XP and Vista. Fully updated, XP runs IE8 and Vista runs IE9. Google Chrome did the same thing 2 months ago when it started requiring Windows 7 and up. Windows XP support was dropped a long time ago. Vista is still supported, but only used by a small chunk of users worldwide (about 1.4%). While XP still has a larger worldwide userbase (around 10%), most companies and individuals don't consider them worth supporting or advertising/marketing/selling to.
jQuery does still support both IE10 and IE11, so it's not like they're dropping all IE workarounds as stated in the title.
Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc
So? You made the decision to use Microsoft technologies. Full stop.
15% of the *customers* are using IE8.
What exactly is he supposed to do?
Use an IE8 exploit to do a drive-by download of Chrome and force it to be the default browser?
The only reason I use jQuery is to smooth over browser oddities. If it doesn't do that then it has no other value. I totally don't understand this decision.
Yes, MSIE is very low marketshare. Yes, MSIE sucks, so fuck that. jQuery was the [partial] answer. Apparently newer versions are no longer that.
Maybe another way to look at it, would be this: if you use jQuery 3, what do you use it for? Why bother at all? It doesn't get you anything, or at least, it won't get me anything.
The entire reason to use jQuery instead of the standard web APIs was because it provided a compatibility layer for the various ways browsers messed up implementing those APIs. Specifically, earlier versions of IE.
If jQuery 3 doesn't support older IEs but only supports the versions when Microsoft started being compatible with the standards, what the hell use is it? It's just additional bloat when you could simply be using the standard APIs directly.
I encourage you to check out the source to either JQuery or Sizzle. You'd be surprised how many workarounds are needed even for items like querySelectorAll and xhr2.
I'd like to see benchmarks for the areas of jQuery where they claim performance increased, but I can't find any..
http://caniuse.com/usage-table
15% on IE 8 just isn't typical. I believe most IE 8 usage is in China. But they are supporting jQuery 1.0 for you. But you are still mad because they made something for everyone else?
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Without JavaScript, HTML documents would have to be static, and apps would have to be native. Would you prefer having to download a separate native app for each Internet service you access through your PC? Would you further prefer having to buy another operating system license or possibly even another computer* if the app happens to be exclusive to an operating system other than the one your PC runs?
* OS X is exclusive** to Mac computers, which start at $499.
** Legally.
A huge portion of our user base is in China where IE 7(!) and 8 are still VERY common. Unfortunately many of our users are on dedicated hardware that absolutely cannot upgrade to a newer browser.
Among this Chinese user base, what prevents Red Flag Linux or some other free operating system from booting? Heck, what keeps Firefox from running on their PCs that run IE 8? At least Firefox is less likely to expose your site's viewers to publicly known exploitable vulnerabilities.
What migration path do sites such as Weebl's Stuff, Homestar Runner, and Animutation Portal have to migrate their vector-based SWF animations off of Flash, other than by rendering them to MP4 or WebM? Rendering an SWF to MP4 or WebM bloats its size in bytes by a factor of ten in my tests.
I thought fully updated both XP and Vista run Edge.
Only with paywalled upgrades. I think CritterNYC was referring to upgrades available without charge beyond the cost of Internet data transfer. The offer to upgrade to Edge without charge, which expires sometime next month, is available only to users of Windows 7 and Windows 8.1.
Over 15% of my sites' users are using IE 8.
On which operating system is Internet Explorer 8 still receiving security fixes? Windows XP and Windows Server 2013 are no longer supported. Nor are IE pre-9 on Windows Vista and IE pre-11 on Windows 7. And unlike other applications that require operating system versions that no longer receive security fixes, an application with "Internet" in its name can't reasonably be air-gapped from the Internet. Continuing to cater to IE 8 enables users' continued use of vulnerable software that puts their information at risk of a man-in-the-browser attack, such as a keylogger that installs itself through a security defect in IE 8.
Will newer version allow use of Content-Security-Policy without script-src unsafe-eval ?
Then have them use IE 8 for ActiveX sites and Firefox for all other sites.