jQuery drops IE6-8 dead code and moves on

Jun 9, 2016 22:40 GMT  ·  By

The jQuery Foundation released yesterday version 3.0 of the jQuery JavaScript framework, the first version that features absolutely no workarounds for old Internet Explorer browsers (IE6-8).

jQuery 3.0 has been in the works since October 2014, and was initially created to complete version 2.0, and it's mission to distant itself from the old 1.0 codebase, bloated because of all the IE workarounds.

Version 2.0 was completely incompatible with version 1.0, and version 3.0 will continue on the path set by version 2.0. The jQuery Foundation says there are little breaking changes in 3.0, and that users should be able to migrate their code without too much work.

Users that no longer have to support old IE browsers in their projects can always use the jQuery Migrate project to move their code to the newer 2.0 and 3.0 branches. 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.

Furthermore, since not all Web projects require AJAX, which takes quite a lot of the jQuery base, the project is now offering a jQuery Slim build without the AJAX and Effects modules.

In other JavaScript news...

Onux launched a cool project called JS++ (patent pending) that features a unified type system for JavaScript code. More details can be found on JS++'s website or in its press release.

Mozilla added a new feature in the Firefox Developer Tools console in Firefox Nightly that greatly simplifies working with JavaScript errors.

According to a survey carried out by the Node.js Foundation in April, Node.js has now around 3.5 million annual users and the growth rate is 100 percent.

We just had Google I/O, and if you didn't know, the I/O is actually a "developer conference" even if many people forgot. Seth Thompson, one of Google's JavaScript wizards, gave a talk at I/O 2016 about V8, WebAssembly, Chrome DevTools, and the future of JavaScript.

Right after the I/O 2016 conference, Google also released the anypixel.js library for creating large and unusual interactive displays.

If you didn't get bored by now of all the free UI toolkits laying around, then you should know CloudFlare open-sourced their UI framework as well.