Monthly Archives: April 2013

jQuery

jQuery 2.0 Released

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You asked for it, you got it: jQuery 2.0 has arrived!

As promised, this version leaves behind the older Internet Explorer 6, 7, and 8 browsers. In return it is smaller, faster, and can be used in JavaScript environments where the code needed for old-IE compatibility often causes problems of its own. But don’t worry, the jQuery team still supports the 1.x branch which does run on IE 6/7/8. You can (and should) continue to use jQuery 1.9 (and the upcoming 1.10) on web sites that need to accommodate older browsers.

Where to Get It

The final jQuery 2.0.0 files can be found here on the jQuery CDN:

The files should also be available on the Google and Microsoft CDNs soon, but please give these folks a few days before releasing a storm of impatient tweets. Also remember that production web sites should be requesting a specific version from any CDN; using a non-specific version like /2/ or jquery-latest.js is considered harmful to your web site’s health and performance.

If you’re upgrading from a version before 1.9, we recommend that you use the jQuery Migrate plugin and read the jQuery 1.9 Upgrade Guide, since there have been a lot of changes. It’s easy to use the plugin, just include it in your HTML file after jQuery and open your browser console to see the messages it generates:

<script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-2.0.0.js"></script>
<script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-migrate-1.1.1.js"></script>

How to Use It

jQuery 2.0 is intended for the modern web; we’ve got jQuery 1.x to handle older browsers and fully expect to support it for several more years. If you want, you can serve 2.0 to newer browsers and 1.9 to older ones using our conditional comment trick, but that is not required. The simplest way to support older browsers is to use jQuery 1.x on your site, since it works for all browsers.

With the release of jQuery 2.0, there are a few environments where the jQuery team will no longer support use of the 1.x line because 2.x is a far better choice. These are typically non-web-site scenarios where support for older IE isn’t relevant. They include:

  • Google Chrome add-ons
  • Mozilla XUL apps and Firefox extensions
  • Firefox OS apps
  • Chrome OS apps
  • Windows 8 Store (“Modern/Metro UI”) apps
  • BlackBerry 10 WebWorks apps
  • PhoneGap/Cordova apps
  • Apple UIWebView class
  • Microsoft WebBrowser control
  • node.js (combined with jsdom or similar)

Many of these environments are themselves a work in progress, and have unique sets of rules or restrictions that are different from the ones typically found when jQuery is used for browsers on Internet web sites. Although we aren’t able to test regularly in all of these non-browser scenarios, we’d like to hear about your experiences in using jQuery with them. Even better, we’d love for the communities supporting these environments to pool and share their knowledge about how to use jQuery 2.0 there.

How 2.0 Changed

Here are some highlights of the changes that jQuery 2.0 brings:

No more support for IE 6/7/8: Remember that this can also affect IE9 and even IE10 if they are used in their “Compatibility View” modes that emulate older versions. To prevent these newer IE versions from slipping back into prehistoric modes, we suggest you always use an X-UA-Compatible tag or HTTP header. If you can use the HTTP header it is slightly better for performance because it avoids a potential browser parser restart.

Reduced size: The final 2.0.0 file is 12 percent smaller than the 1.9.1 file, thanks to the elimination of patches that were only needed for IE 6, 7, and 8. We had hoped to remove even more code and increase performance, but older Android/WebKit 2.x browsers are now the weakest link. We’re carefully watching Android 2.x market share to determine when we can cross it off the support list, and don’t expect it to take very long.

Custom builds for even smaller files: This feature has been greatly refined and extended since its debut in jQuery 1.8. You can now exclude combinations of 12 different modules to create a custom version that is even smaller. A new minimal selector engine, basically a thin wrapper around the browser’s querySelectorAll API, lets you shrink the build to less than 10KB when minified and gzipped. See the README for instructions on how to create a custom build, and remember that any plugins you use will also need to stick to the subset you select.

jQuery 1.9 API equivalence: jQuery 2.0 is API-compatible with 1.9, which means that all of the changes documented in the jQuery 1.9 Upgrade Guide have been applied to jQuery 2.0 as well. If you haven’t yet upgraded to jQuery 1.9, you may want to try that first. Be sure to use the jQuery Migrate plugin.

The full record of changes can be found in the changelog below, and in the list of commits on GitHub.

What’s Next

In keeping with our pledge to minimize API divergence between the 1.x and 2.x branches, we’ll be releasing a jQuery 1.10 within a couple of months that incorporates the bug fixes and differences reported from both the 1.9 and 2.0 beta cycles. In the future, we will be maintaining feature parity between 1.10 and 2.0, 1.11 and 2.1, etc. Patch releases will happen in each branch on their own schedule, based on team resources and severity of any reported bugs.

Please do try this new release with all your web sites and HTML apps. If you find problems, create a minimal test case (preferably using a site like jsFiddle or jsbin) and submit it to our bug tracker. We’re particularly interested in situations where jQuery 1.9.1 behaves differently than jQuery 2.0.0, since that’s something we’ve tried to avoid.

Who Helped

jQuery 2.0 has been 10 months in the making, a product of the jQuery Core team: Julian Aubourg, Corey Frang, Oleg Gaidarenko, Richard Gibson, Michal Golebiowski, Mike Sherov, Rick Waldron, and Timmy Willison. Oleg and Michal joined the team during the 2.0 odyssey; we’re glad to have them aboard.

Many thanks to the other jQuery team and community members who contributed fixes: Steven Benner, Pascal Borreli, Jean Boussier, James Burke, Adam Coulombe, Tom Fuertes, Scott González, Dmitry Gusev, Daniel Herman, Nguyen Phuc Lam, Andrew Plummer, Mark Raddatz, Jonathan Sampson, Renato Oliveira dos Santos, Ryunosuke Sato, Isaac Schlueter, Karl Sieburg, Danil Somsikov, Timo Tijhof, and Li Xudong.

To those of you who tested the betas and reported bugs, we’re especially thankful for your help since it helped to make the release more solid and stable.

How You Can Help

Please, participate! Try the code (especially the betas), file good bug reports with clear test cases, contribute patches. Write or edit documentation. Come to the jQuery Conference Portland in June and mingle with other jQuery-ites. Visit contribute.jquery.org to learn how to get involved with the project.

You can also become a jQuery Foundation member to support our efforts and get some fabulous gifts in the process!

jQuery 2.0.0 Changelog

Ajax

Attributes

Build

Core

Css

Deferred

Effects

Event

Manipulation

Selector

Support

Traversing

Please do not report bugs in the blog comments! Instead, read the blog post for details on how to report bugs.

jQuery

jQuery 2.0 Beta 3 Released

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We’re coming down the home stretch for the release of jQuery 2.0! Today sees the release of Beta 3.

To paraphrase Dirty Harry: I know what you’re thinking. “Is Beta 3 gonna break my code?” Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement we may have lost track of things and introduced some bugs. So being as this is jQuery, the most powerful JavaScript library in the world, and could blow your web site clean off the Internets, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: “Do I feel lucky?” Well, do ya?

We don’t want to accidentally blow your site off the Internets; don’t count on being lucky. That means we really need your help in finding and fixing any bugs that may be hiding in the nooks and crannies of jQuery 2.0. We want to get all the problems ironed out before this version ships, and the only way to do that is to find out whether it runs with your code.

You can get this latest beta from the jQuery CDN: http://code.jquery.com/jquery-2.0.0-beta3.js

You can also use the jQuery Migrate plugin with jQuery 2.0 to restore deprecated features from those older versions and/or diagnose compatibility issues. We strongly recommend that you do use Migrate for older code, it will save a lot of time and trouble in debugging.

Staying in Sync

Remember that jQuery 2.0 will not run on IE 6, 7, or 8. You must run Internet Explorer 9 or 10 in their “modern” mode and not use the X-UA-Compatible feature, for example, to force IE10 into IE7 mode.

The jQuery team will continue to support both the jQuery 1.x and 2.x lines simultaneously for as long as those older versions of IE are still a factor. The currently released version of jQuery 1.x, which is 1.9.1, has the same API as jQuery 2.0. We are planning a 1.10 update to the 1.x line in a few months that will address any minor differences in the two versions. At that point we will still keep the two lines in sync: 1.10 and 2.0, 1.11 and 2.1, etc.

If you’d like to try jQuery 2.0 on web sites where you still need to support IE 6, 7, and 8, you can use conditional comments. All browsers except old IE will get the second script and ignore the first:

<!--[if lt IE 9]>
    <script src="jquery-1.9.1.js"></script>
<![endif]-->
<!--[if gte IE 9]><!-->
    <script src="jquery-2.0.0b3.js"></script>
<!--<![endif]-->

Remember, however, that jQuery 1.x continues to work on all the browsers that jQuery supports.

What’s New

Here are the major changes since Beta 2:

Node.js compatibility. If the jquery.js file is included in Node via require(), it will export the jQuery object.

Windows 8 Store App compatibility. Some feature detects that were only needed for IE 6/7/8 were removed to prevent a security exception in Windows Store apps.

More bug fixes. This beta includes fixes to bugs reported since jQuery 2.0 beta 2 and jQuery 1.9.1 were shipped. The complete list is below.

Remove jQuery.support.boxModel. Nobody should be using this property since it has been deprecated since jQuery 1.3 and jQuery itself has never supported Quirks mode.

Further nips and tucks to the code. Fixing bugs often adds more bytes, but we’ve been able to actually reduce the size of the full minified/gzipped build by a couple of dozen bytes.

The wrap methods can now be excluded in a custom build. If you (and the plugins you use) aren’t calling any of the wrap methods like .wrapAll() or .unwrap(), you can leave them out of your custom build.

Custom builds under 10k bytes! If you’re able to exclude all the optional modules, you’ll be rewarded with a custom build that’s only 9,226 bytes when minified and gzipped. See the beta 2 blog post for more information on how to do custom builds.

The full list of commits is available on GitHub and the closed bug tickets are below. Many thanks to Rick Waldron, Michal Golebiowski, Li Xudong, Timmy Willison, Nguyen Phuc Lam, Steven Benner, Tom Fuertes, Richard Gibson, Scott González, and Oleg Gaidarenko for their efforts on this beta.

Ajax

Build

Core

Css

Deferred

Effects

Event

Manipulation

Selector

Support

Traversing