The latest news coming from the world of jQuery is the official release of jQuery 2.0.
The new jQuery 2.x library is a significantly smaller file size than the jQuery 1.x series of libraries, but the 2.0 library does not support versions of Internet Explorer prior to version 9.
For the foreseeable future, the makers of jQuery plan to run two separate lines of the jQuery library:
- The jQuery 1.x library will continue to be developed for years to come and will support older browser versions.
- On the other hand, the jQuery 2.x library will support newer browsers and will offer both a smaller file size, and likely modern features that older browsers can not support.
Note: Have a look at this series of articles covering jQuery if you find this post interesting and want to read more about the subject.
So What’s New About jQuery 2.0?
The modernized jQuery 2.0 library is being claimed to be especially mobile device friendly. I can certainly see the benefit of the smaller file size and modern Web standards support when it comes to mobile devices. In future the makers of jQuery intend to remove support for WebKit/Android 2.x browsers in order to further streamline the jQuery 2.x library.
Although there will now be two branches of jQuery, each branch will share the same API so that switching between versions should be transparent.
You can reference the minified production version of JQuery 2.0 using the following URL:
<script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-2.0.0.js"></script>
If you need to include the jQuery migration plugin it is available at this URL:
<script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-migrate-1.1.1.js"></script>
Ensuring Browser Compatibility
If you do use the jQuery 2.0 library, then you should also specify your document compatibility mode in combination with using the HTML5 doctype header. If you use these two settings combination, most browsers will know to use the latest framework support possible.
Setting browser compatibility is especially important because Internet Explorer likes to run in a compatibility mode that by default is set to IE5 quirks mode.
Here is how you can set your compatibility mode to the latest and greatest:
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=Edge" >
Using IE’s Edge mode, you are telling it to use the highest compatibility mode supported by the browser. So for example IE9 will run in IE9 mode rather than scaling down to IE5 quirks mode.
Then also make sure to set your HTML doctype to HTML5 as follows:
<!doctype html>
Have a look at an article I wrote on the subject to find out more about browser compatibility mode and JQuery .
Justin Cooney 
Reblogged this on CHUVASH.eu and commented:
jQuery 2.0 leaves behind the older Internet Explorer 6, 7, and 8 browsers. In return it is smaller, faster.
Thanks for the reblog Anatoly!