jQuery 4.0 trims browser support, removes APIs

Long-awaited update to the venerable JavaScript library abandons old browsers including Internet Explorer 10 and removes functions you should no longer use.

jQuery 4.0, now in a beta state, drops support for a number of older browsers and removes previously deprecated APIs. The new release also introduces support for Trusted Types.

With jQuery 4.0, support is dropped for Internet Explorer versions 10 and older, Edge Legacy, Firefox versions before release 65, and iOS versions before release 11. Plans call for removal of support for Internet Explorer 11 in jQuery 5.0. Also with jQuery 4.0, native behavior is no longer overridden. That means all browsers except Internet Explorer will follow the current World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) specification.

APIs removed in jQuery 4.0 include 13 previously deprecated APIs, which either were meant to be internal or that now have native equivalents in all supported browsers. Also removed are the jQuery prototype Array methods push, sort, and splice, which also were always meant to be for internal use only. These methods have been switched to equivalent Array functions.

jQuery 4.0 adds support for Trusted Types, ensuring that HTML wrapped in TrustedHTML can be used as input to jQuery methods for manipulation in a way that does not violated the require-trusted-types-for Content Security Policy. 

And the slim build has gotten smaller in jQuery 4.0, with the removal of defaults and callbacks.

The jQuery 4.0 beta was unveiled February 6. The full changelog for the release can be found on GitHub. Files for the jQuery 4.0 beta can be accessed from the jQuery CDN or linked to directly:

Developers also can get the jQuery 4.0 beta from NPM:

npm install [email protected] code

First released in 2006, jQuery is positioned to be a small and fast library. Capabilities such as HTML document traversal are supported along with manipulation, animation, and event handling.