Changes to jQuery Browser Support

Currently, up to and including the jQuery 1.9 release (not out yet, but coming), jQuery actively supports the following browsers:

• Internet Explorer 6+
• Firefox: Current -1 version
• Safari: Current -1 version
• Opera: Current -1 version
• Chrome: Current -1 version

According to jQuery’s browser support page, any problem [in these browsers] should be considered and reported as a bug in jQuery.

As the jQuery team announced in its blog post, jQuery Core: Version 1.9 and Beyond, the 2.0 release (slated for early 2013) will drop support for Internet Explorer versions 6, 7 and 8. The 1.9 release will continue to support IE 6/7/8 and will even see parallel (to 2.0) development and bug fixes. There is even a code sample of conditional logic so developers can prompt browsers to load the appropriate jQuery library (based on IE browser, or not).

Readers have gotten a bit confused on this point, so much so that the jQuery team wrote a follow-up piece on Sunday, jQuery 1.9 and 2.0 — TL;DR Edition.

My concerns are two-fold. First, many web developers won’t take the time to pay attention to the parallel track for 1.9 and 2.0 and may implement the new version as soon as it is available, penalizing users trapped on old versions of IE. Second, many web developers don’t seem to know their sites’ user base and may make ill-informed decisions to move up to the latest release (perhaps intentionally so), thereby penalizing users trapped on old versions of IE.

Looking at SitePoint’s latest details on browser trends (Browser Trends July 2012: IE9 Strikes Back), and bearing in mind that every site on the web will likely have different numbers, we can see that IE 6/7/8 make up a combined 15.75% of users. In-your-head math tells you that for a site with a million users, that means 157,500 users will run into problems today if the site were upgraded to jQuery 2.0.

The browser numbers will likely change by early 2013, but perhaps not by much. If Microsoft’s new forced updates work (The Skinny on IE’s Update Policy) then this may all be a moot point.

Either way, site developers will still need to be smart enough to pay attention to their site statistics and respect those users who are trapped in a browser, instead of either forgetting about them or intentionally penalizing them.

As for why jQuery is making these changes, I understand both sides. Removing the bloat from the libraries by dropping IE 6/7/8 support should slim the files and reduce processing overhead. That’s good for all non-IE users. The other side is nicely summed up in this tweet:

Yes, jQuery is bloated by IE fixes. But it’s like a band-aid dropping support for wounds because the bleeding makes it difficult to stick

— Jake Archibald (@jaffathecake) June 29, 2012