The next beta of jQuery 2.0 has arrived! This beta has several changes and tweaks based on the feedback we received from those of you who generously tested the first beta. We really need you to test this version as well and let us know what still needs to be done. We believe this version is very stable and ready for you to try; don’t wait until the final release and then find out your code doesn’t run with it.
Remember that jQuery 2.0 will not run on IE 6, 7, or 8; we’re saving that duty for jQuery 1.9. We fully expect that most Internet web sites may continue to use jQuery 1.x for quite a while, as long as older versions of IE still comprise a large proportion of web surfers. And so the jQuery team will also continue to support both the jQuery 1.x and 2.x lines. Don’t feel like you’re missing something or falling behind by using 1.9 on your web site, since the APIs for 1.9 and 2.0 are the same.
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-2.0.0b2.js"></script>
<!--<![endif]-->
There are lots of other environments where jQuery 2.0 should fit in very well. Here are a few suggestions:
- Google Chrome plugins
- 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
- Cheerio or jsdom with node.js
- Intranet applications
On the node.js front, the jQuery team now owns the “jquery” and “jQuery” names in npm and will soon be shipping 2.0 releases there.
You can get this latest beta from the jQuery CDN:
To run pre-1.9-era code with jQuery 2.0, you can also use the jQuery Migrate plugin 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.
What’s New
Lots of bug fixes: All the relevant fixes from jQuery 1.9.1 and 1.9.2pre have been incorporated into jQuery 2.0 beta 2. We sadly had to back out some optimizations that aren’t supported by older versions of WebKit such as Android 2.3, but most of those didn’t have a significant size impact. Still, we plan to bring them back as soon as we can! To help us out, anytime you see an old Android phone you can “accidentally” whack it with a hammer.
