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JQuery 2.0 Released

blog.jquery.com

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Re: JQuery 2.0 Released

#201

Post by nathan_long »

EnderMB wrote: post #195
mattstreet wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we'll get a lot less from the open source community if they think they have to support all legacy crap for all time. Eventually there comes a time to move on. We're just arguing about if its time yet. People can still keep using IE 6/7 for the shitty inhouse apps written for it by their company a decade ago, and use a damn modern browser for everything else.

> People can still keep using IE 6/7 for the shitty inhouse apps written for it by their company a decade ago, and use a damn modern browser for everything else. You should try working for an agency that handles large clients. A year ago I was still building pages for an airport that needed to support IE6 to a functional level. We charged a huge number for that support, but this was such a large client that had a pro…

>> A year ago I was still building pages for an airport that needed to support IE6 to a functional level. We charged a huge number for that support

Bravo. What you did was rational, explains why the jQuery team is doing this, and gives you your solution.

You and they both recognize that supporting old browsers is expensive. They're dropping that support. You're charging a lot to deal with it, which incentivizes clients to stop asking for it.

With the extra money you are charging, you can, if necessary, pay someone to fix bugs in jQuery that affect those clients' projects. You can contribute those patches back. Everyone wins.

I understand your emotional response to "losing" support for browsers, but this is not a story of open source failing you. You could have been paying for a proprietary library instead of using jQuery. jQuery has already saved you thousands by being free. You don't get to dictate the project's direction, but you have lots of savings ready to patch it as needed.

I'd say that's a pretty good deal.

Re: JQuery 2.0 Released

#202

Post by nathan_long »

vincentkriek wrote: post #172
dmethvin wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That last one. Given our past record on supporting things you shouldn't be too worried. But if you are, go to our GitHub project and click the Fork button.

Although I am probably just being a stupid person, I really dislike this argument "If you don't like it, fix it yourself". While it might feel offensive that people are complaining left and right about the new version, it is actually a compliment. I am not trying to be a love-all hippie here, but people are complaining because they really fucking love the solution jQuery put out there to support multiple browsers. Do…

I wouldn't call it "if you don't like it, fix it yourself." I'd call it "you need code that does X? We don't have that, but we have something that does 99.9% of X, and you can have it for free!"

Re: JQuery 2.0 Released

#203

Post by [deleted] »

dmethvin wrote: post #19
JoeCortopassi wrote: post #13

I think what a lot of people are upset about here, is jQuery entered the web development scene as "the library that solved cross-browser compatibility issues". Now while IE 6 is an obvious one to drop, IE 7 is a little tougher, and IE 8 is down right impossible to drop at this time. I understand that jQuery wants to promote a modern framework, but people didn't adopt it for it's fancy features. They adopted it becaus…

Sorry if I seem cranky, but did you READ the blog post? jQuery 1.9 supports those browsers and the jQuery team still supports it. Do you have a problem with us supporting a second version that can be smaller, faster, and work in places other than obsolete browsers?

[deleted]

Re: JQuery 2.0 Released

#204

Post by jrochkind1 »

One thing that confuses me:

If the JQuery team is committed to keep supporting 1.9/1.x, entirely API-compatible with 2.0 -- what is the benefit to JQuery of the 1.x/2.x fork? You get a cleaner easier to maintain codebase in 2.x -- but you've got to keep maintaining 1.x anyway. If there was a feature you didn't want to add to 1.x because it was too hard -- you still can't add it to 2.x and not 1.x, because you committed to supporting 1.x as API-compatible, no?

Is the idea that 2.x will provide better performance on capable browsers than 1.x? So, yeah, the development burden is no less, but the results are better.

I guess I understand why people are doubting whether they will really follow through -- because if they do follow through, it makes it somewhat unclear what the benefit of the 2.x refactor was in the first place.

Re: JQuery 2.0 Released

#205

Post by dave5104 »

nasmorn wrote: post #170
nbouscal wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a shitty situation to be in. Sounds like a great opportunity for someone to disrupt that industry titan, though.

Some businesses have deeper moats than front end dev speed.

This is exactly right for multi-family housing. I can't see any sort of startup or disruption coming in anytime soon without taking years of hard work to reach 50% feature parity to meet what the industry expects are standard features. (Or maybe I've been working here too long to get past that notion.)

Re: JQuery 2.0 Released

#206

Post by acdha »

talmand wrote: post #191
acdha wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IE8 dropped under 10% for me last month. Several years seems fine to me.

Well then, be sure to let us know which browsers we should be worried over supporting with your analytics from a few years from now.

Try Akamai's global CDN stats showing similar numbers:

http://www.akamai.com/html/io/io_dataset.html#stat=browser_v...

Re: JQuery 2.0 Released

#207

Post by talmand »

acdha wrote: post #206
talmand wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well then, be sure to let us know which browsers we should be worried over supporting with your analytics from a few years from now.

Try Akamai's global CDN stats showing similar numbers: http://www.akamai.com/html/io/io_dataset.html#stat=browser_v...

Ok, what if my analytics disagree with their analytics? That was my point. Every website's needs will be slightly different than others. The point is that someone saying "I don't need to support browser X" doesn't mean that everyone else can stop supporting browser X.

Re: JQuery 2.0 Released

#208

Post by coldtea »

EnderMB wrote: post #165
coldtea wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is what worries me. You only need to spend an hour on HN or Reddit to see that web devs couldn't care less about legacy browsers, even when most businesses need to support them. As I wrote, even if the whole core team insists on going 2.0 only at some point (high unlikely), it's not like it needs any highly technical skills for interested people to jump in and maintain 1.9. > I support the decision to fork jQu…

Don't get me wrong. I agree with you, and I don't think it's really a problem. Hell, if it is it's not a problem to use both libraries, and to serve 1.x to those using older browsers. It's just a shift in the core mentality of what people view jQuery as. Many of us use jQuery because it works, regardless of what browser a user is on. For a lot of others, jQuery IS JavaScript. If they want to do something on their sit…

>This is the classic open-source "fuck you with a smile" response. Fixing new functionality is not an attractive problem, and out of the multi-million strong community I can see very few people with both the skills, the time, or the desire to fix these problems, and those that could fix the problems are more likely to wait for someone else to do it.

If it was something like a database engine, an obscure language, some network utility, a server, etc, I might have agreed. That is, if it was something esoteric, that needs high skills, and only some very knowledgable of it's internals could adopt it.

But this is jQuery we're talking about. Not rocket science. Lots of guys have the skills and time to fix these problems.

>I'd consider myself fairly handy with JavaScript, but I'm also a very busy man, and my office won't want me spending company time fixing a bug in a plugin if there is another way. Also, there isn't a developer alive that likes fixing legacy bugs. I can think of a million things I'd rather do than fix IE6-7 bugs.

And wouldn't the same exact reasonings apply to the jQuery team? They can also could think "of a million things they'd rather do than fix IE6-7 bugs".

Still, they said the will release 1.10, and support old browsers for as long as needed. If they hadn't released 2.0 that would also be the case. They would support old browsers for as long as needed. The only difference is now they are doing it with two codebases.

That said, your company might not want you "spending company time fixing a bug in a plugin", but for popular plugins there are companies with the money and the resources to have their stuff fix them if the need arises.

Re: JQuery 2.0 Released

#209

Post by EGreg »

It would be nice if jQuery made builds for every browser, so savvier developers who can write server-side code can actually spit out only the relevant jQuery to the relevant browser. I mean, it's not like caching files at the ISP level is the limiting factor here, so each browser can cache its own file.

Re: JQuery 2.0 Released

#210

Post by EGreg »

tambourine_man wrote: post #65
dmethvin wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry if I seem cranky, but did you READ the blog post? jQuery 1.9 supports those browsers and the jQuery team still supports it. Do you have a problem with us supporting a second version that can be smaller, faster, and work in places other than obsolete browsers?

I do. 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. Dropping IE 6, 7 and 8 support for a 12% smaller file size while effectively forking your code base for the foreseeable future is a lousy decision. Increase complexity tremendously for what, 3-4 KB when gzipped?

Listen, I would be happy to just serve different versions of jQuery for different browsers. This is what's supposed to happen, and Google does it right.
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