Upcoming jQuery 2.0 will end support for old IE versions

The developers of the jQuery project have announced that jQuery 2.0 will no longer support Internet Explorer 6, 7, and 8. Sites that still want to serve visitors with outdated IE browsers will have to use jQuery 1.9.

According to the jQuery developers, the old Internet Explorer versions have been “a thorn in the side” of web developers for more than ten years and the outdated Microsoft browsers are problems in the further development of the popular web framework. Therefore, it was decided to no longer support Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8 in jQuery 2.0, due for release in early 2013, by stopping all kinds of workarounds in the code for these browsers by default.

Websites that have a lot of visitors with an old Internet Explorer version can start using jQuery 1.9. This version will also be released next year and offers IE functionality via plug-ins and alternative APIs. The 1.9 cycle will also get bug fixes.

By omitting IE support, the code for jQuery 2.0 can be cleaned up considerably, according to the developers. This makes the framework more compact and able to perform better. Error handling would also improve. In addition, the conditional comment function allows legacy IE browsers to use jQuery 1.9, while more modern browsers – including IE9 – can use the jQuery 2.0 framework.

The jQuery team expects it to take at least another two years before the use of the old IE versions has fallen sharply, so that support for these browsers is still necessary. Meanwhile, the developers of the open source framework are increasingly targeting mobile browsers.