B
Story
jQuery 4
Related: This is a nice write-up of how to write reactive jQuery. It's presented as an alternative to jQuery spaghetti code, in the context of being in a legacy codebase where you might not have access to newer frameworks.

https://css-tricks.com/reactive-jquery-for-spaghetti-fied-le...

This brought me flashbacks of jQuery spaghetti monsters from years ago, some were Backbone related. In retrospect, over-engineered React code can be worse than decently organized jQuery code, but some jQuery mess was worse than any React code. So I guess I'm saying, React did raise the bar and standard of quality - but it can get to be too much, sometimes a judicious use of old familiar tool gets the job done.
  • ·
  • 2 hours ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
I used this approach before and it indeed works better than the 2010-style jQuery mess. A good fit for userscripts too, where the problem you attempt to solve is fairly limited and having dependencies, especially with a build steps, is a pain. Note that you don't need jQuery for this at all, unless you are somehow stuck with ancient browser support as a requirement - querySelector, addEventListener, innerHtml - the basic building blocks of the approach - have been available and stable for a long time.
  • doix
  • ·
  • 6 hours ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
Unfortunately, nowadays writing userscripts is much harder than it used to be. Most websites are using some sort of reactive FE framework so you need to make extensive use of mutationObservers (or whatever the equivalent is in jQuery I guess).
I often go for `setInterval` over `MutationObserver` because it works and I don't need instant reactivity and I don't have to think too much about it.
It's easier to write with LLMs. One-off projects (the way I treat userscripts) is where they really shine.

Oh the horrible things I do with Instagram...

Very true. I guess that depends on what websites you find issues with? I just checked mine and all of those are quality of life improvements for fully server rendered sites like HN or phpBB forums.
  • doix
  • ·
  • 3 hours ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
Yeah, I mostly use it for QoL improvements but for work related things. So Jira, Bitbucket, GitHub, Linear etc. basically whatever my employer uses. Back in the early 2010s most of that software was fully server rendered. Nowadays it's pretty rare for that to be the case.

I just try and get LLMs to do it for me because I'm lazy, and they like to use setInterval instead of mutationObservers and if it works, I just live with the inefficiency.

The Atlassian stack is particularly bad to extend IMHO given that there are sooooo many API endpoints that their UI calls and most of them are dog slow.
I love jQuery and it’s elegant methods chaining over object / array of DOM elements you keep in the chain.

15+ years ago I wrote a tutorial for french people about using jQuery, it got a lot of views. I hope it helped spread jQuery.

> includes some breaking changes

Most of the changes are completely reasonable - a lot are internal cleanup that would require no code changes on the user side, dropping older browsers, etc.

But the fact that there are breaking API changes is the most surprising thing to me. Projects that still use jQuery are going to be mostly legacy projects (I myself have several lying around). Breaking changes means more of an upgrade hassle on something that's already not worth much of an upgrade hassle to begin with. Removing things like `jQuery.isArray` serve only to make the upgrade path harder - the internal jQuery function code could literally just be `Array.isArray`, but at least then you wouldn't be breaking jQuery users' existing code.

At some point in the life of projects like these, I feel like they should accept their place in history and stop themselves breaking compatibility with any of the countless thousands (millions!) of their users' projects. Just be a good clean library that one can keep using without having to think about it forever and ever.

  • flomo
  • ·
  • 3 hours ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
Whenever HTMX comes up here, I always think "isn't that just some gobbledy-gook which replaces about 3 lines of imperative jquery?"

Anyway, jQuery always did the job, use it forever if it solves your problems.

  • sgt
  • ·
  • 2 hours ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
I pretty much use HTMX and vanilla JS to solve most problems, when I use Django at least. Keeps things simple and gives that SPA feel to the app too.
The problem with jQuery is that, being imperative, it quickly becomes complex when you need to handle more than one thing because you need to cover imperatively all cases.
  • flomo
  • ·
  • 2 hours ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
Yeah, that's the other HN koan about "You probably don't need React if..." But if you are using jquery/vanilla to shove state into your HTML, you probably actually do need something like react.
  • ·
  • 3 hours ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
These days I’ve moved to native JS, but hot damn the $() selector interface was elegant and minimal vs document.getElement[s]by[attribute)].

While presumably jquery is slower than native selectors, maybe that could be pre-computed away.

  • jraph
  • ·
  • 1 hour ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
In case you missed them: check out querySelector and querySelectorAll. They are closer to what the jQuery selector system does, and I think they were inspired by it.

If the verbosity bothers you, you can always define an utility function with a short name (although I'm not personally a fan of this kind of things).

https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/Web/API/Document/querySel...

https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/Web/API/Document/querySel...

https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/Web/API/Element/querySele...

https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/Web/API/Element/querySele...

jQuery but gets compiled out like svelte... Not a bad idea at all.
  • efskap
  • ·
  • 36 minutes ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
I hate to sound like a webdev stereotype but surely the parsing step of querySelector, which is cached, is not slow enough to warrant maintaining such a build step.
Some things you build not because they are necessary, but because you can.
Still one of my favourite libs on the whole planet. I will always love jQuery. It is responsible for my career in (real) companies.

Live on jQuery! Go forth and multiply!

  • sieep
  • ·
  • 25 minutes ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
all these kids chasing the new frameworks...jQuery and .NET framework have always kept me fed!
  • b3ing
  • ·
  • 7 hours ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
Nice to see it still around and updated. The sad part is I guess this means React will be around in 2060.
What's wrong with React?

It made it so much better to build apps vs. spaghetti jQuery.

I still have nightmares about jeeping track of jQuery callbacks

It's overly verbose, untuitive and in 2025, having a virtual dom is no longer compulsory to write interactive web apps. If you want to write modern web apps, you can use Svelte. If you want to write web apps truly functionally, you can use Elm. React is the jQuery of our times. It was really helpful in the Angular era but we are living at the dawn of a new era now.
The problem with React is that it solved frontend.

So the options are to 1. Code React all day and be happy with it. 2. Come up with reasons why it's bad.

There are many talented and intellectually curious people in the field which lean towards 2.

  • gmac
  • ·
  • 1 hour ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
The problem with React IMHO is it’s so dominant and so annoyingly over-engineered for many problems. I use Mithril and find it much less fuss.
by 2060 React Native should be up to v0.93
  • ·
  • 3 hours ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
there are already de facto two Reacts. by 2060, there will be five.
Two Reacts!?
  • o_m
  • ·
  • 1 hour ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
The main divide now is client side React versus Server Components usually with a node.js backend
  • exac
  • ·
  • 6 hours ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
As someone who doesn't use React, there is React Native (for iOS & Android), and React (and that can be server-rendered or client-rendered).
There's also React Native Web
I'm sorry what
  • afiori
  • ·
  • 4 minutes ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
I find it is a good idea, it allows developers to cleanly define how to structure elements without random divs sneaking in.

It requires a strong design system and it probably makes it harder to use some web APIs but those can be reasonable tradeoffs

In case you want to use React to make Web sites as well.
  • neals
  • ·
  • 1 hour ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
They should make a version of that runs as an app on a phone
  • ·
  • 1 hour ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
There was also react vr
class components & function components.
That is the least interesting divide in the react community
It's amazing how much jQuery is still used today. Even on modern websites you can often find it included (browser devtools -> jQuery in the console, and see). And not just on hobbyist sites, but on serious company websites and their web tools as well.
Curious:

Whats the current behemoth instead of JQ?

I perceive it as still being the de-facto standard?

  • croes
  • ·
  • 1 hour ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
Many things JQ introduced are browser native now.
Unbelievably, still supports IE 11 which is scheduled to be deprecated in jQuery 5.0
It looks like it was done to not delay the 4.0 release. Since they follow semvar, that means it won't get the axe until 5.0 [1]. Pretty wild considering that 3.0 was released 10 years ago.

But maybe they will scope this one better: they were talking about getting 4.0 released in 2020 back in 2019!

[1]: https://github.com/jquery/jquery/pull/5077 [2]: https://github.com/jquery/jquery/issues/4299

Backwards compatibility. Apparently there are still some people stuck on IE11. It's nice that jQuery still supports those users and the products that they are still running.
This is the part that I find the strangest:

> We also dropped support for other very old browsers, including Edge Legacy, iOS versions earlier than the last 3, Firefox versions earlier than the last 2 (aside from Firefox ESR), and Android Browser.

Safari from iOS 16, released in 2022, is more modern in every conceivable way than MSIE 11. I'd also bet there are more people stuck with iOS 16- than those who can only use IE 11, except maybe at companies with horrid IT departments, in which case I kind of see this as enabling them to continue to suck.

I'd vote to rip the bandaid off. MSIE is dead tech, deader than some of the other browsers they're deprecating. Let it fade into ignomony as soon as possible.

“Support” here probably means “we’re testing jQuery for compatibility on those web browsers” - likely Safari from iOS 16 still runs this version of jQuery just fine. However, running automated test suites or support bugfixing for those clients is a lot harder than spinning up some Microsoft-provided VM with IE11 on it.
Fair point.
  • croes
  • ·
  • 1 hour ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
It’s rarely a horrid IT department but some special or legacy software without modern replacement
> Safari from iOS 16, released in 2022, is more modern in every conceivable way than MSIE 11.

There are likely millions if not tens of millions of computers still running MSIE11. There are likely to be no devices running iOS 16

According to Cloudflare, there are almost no users still on MSIE of any version.[0]

Statcounter says there are about 4.6% of iOS users still on iOS 16.[1]

My gut instinct is that there are multiple times more people using iOS 16 today than MSIE of any version.

[0] https://radar.cloudflare.com/reports/browser-market-share-20...

[1] https://gs.statcounter.com/os-version-market-share/ios/mobil...

I visited a distillery in 2020. Their machines were managed by HP laptops running Windows XP. Those machines and those laptops and that Windows XP are probably still there with their old IE browser.
IIRC public counters tend to miss corporate networks.
  • Strom
  • ·
  • 2 hours ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
> There are likely to be no devices running iOS 16

My iPhone X is stuck on iOS 16 with no way to upgrade.

However, the phone is still working well. Despite being in daily use for 8 years it still has 81% battery capacity, has never been dropped, has a great OLED screen, can record 4K@60 video. It is far more responsive than a brand new 2025 $200 Android phone from e.g. Xiaomi. It still gets security patches from Apple. The only real shortcoming compared to a modern iPhone is the low light camera performance. That and some app developers don't support iOS 16 anymore, so e.g. I can't use the ChatGPT app and have to use it via the browser, but the Gemini app works fine.

Are those people/products upgrading jQuery though?
Who is still stuck on IE 11---and why?
  • flomo
  • ·
  • 4 hours ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
There are some really retrograde government and bigcorps, running ten year old infrastructure. And if that is your customer-base? You do it. Plus I worked on a consumer launch site for something you might remember, and we got the late requirement for IE7 support, because that's what the executives in Japan had. No customers cared, but yeah it worked in IE7.
Oh, certainly, corporations run ten-year-old software. But for the record, IE 11 turns 13 this year [1]. Which makes it somewhat more surprising to me.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_11

Some corporate machines still run XP. Why upgrade what works?
SECURITY
Yet it would still run Windows Adware edition. =3
Use Enterprise
I think anything still using ActiveX like stuff or "native" things. Sure, it should all be dead and gone, but some might not be and there is no path forward with any of that AFAIK.
Surely by this point someone has written a 0-day for MSIE 11 which gets root and silently installs an Internet Explorer skinned Chromium. If not, someone should get onto that. —Signed, everyone
Not everybody in the world can use modern hard- and software. There are tons of school computer labs running old software
Yes, run jQuery 3.

Crazy to think that software running inside IE11 should use the latest version of a library.

  • ·
  • 1 hour ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
  • ·
  • 1 hour ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
  • chao-
  • ·
  • 5 hours ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
I cannot express how much I admire the amount of effort jQuery puts into their upgrade tools.
The first time I truly enjoyed web development was when I got the hang of jQuery. Made everything so much simple and usable!
jQuery made a messy ecosystem slightly less fragmented. Combined with CKEditor it effectively tamed a lot of web-developer chaos until nodejs dropped. =3
jQuery was peak JavaScript.

Good times, I'm glad it is still around.

It is still used by many websites.
Indeed. Though a lot of its feature found their way into plain vanilla Javascript and browsers, the syntax is still so much easier with jQuery.
Everything I ever used jquery for 15 years ago, I found myself able to do with the CSS and the JS standard library maybe 10 years ago. I honestly am confused when I see jquery used today for anything.

Is there still anything jquery does you cannot easily do with a couple lines of stdlib?

The terse and chainable jQuery syntax is more readable, easier to remember, and thus more pleasant to maintain. Rewriting for stdlib is easy, but bloats out the code by forcing you to pepper in redundant boilerplate on nearly every line.
Jquery does many things in one line that requires a couple lines of stdlib. Writing less code is what libraries are for.
Until you have to upgrade it and it bites you
jQuery's big point was to give a consistent API over inconsistent browser implementations, so it typically saves you from bites more often than it bites you.
AJAX, now that's a term I haven't seen in ages. I remember buying the O'Reilly book "Head First AJAX in high school and being completely amazed by it.
I remember being scared of jQuery and then being scared of vanilla JS. My, how time flies.

Incredible it's still being maintained.

I still love the simplicity a ajax call can be done in Jquery
What does jQuery provide that the Fetch API doesn’t?
jQuery is the last time I felt a library doing magic! Nothing has matched the feelings since then.
Not even modern vanilla JavaScript?
It's fairly close now but so much more verbose: ie document.getElementById('theID') vs $('#theID')
Nearly every time I write something in JavaScript, the first line is const $ = (selector) => document.querySelector(selector). I do not have jQuery nostalgia as much as many others here, but that particular shorthand is very useful.

For extra flavor, const $$ = (selector) => document.querySelectorAll(selector) on top.

I am still using jQuery.
I love that they support ES6 modules, Trusted Types, and CSP! The clearing out of old APIs that have platform replacements is nice to see too!
is there any reason to use jquery if you've never used it before
Don’t let all of the old heads glazing jquery in this thread confuse you - they’re just nostalgic. There’s no reason to even think of using jquery in 2026
It’s refreshing to see jQuery 4
This is huge. jQuery is still my way to go for any website requiring some custom interaction that isn't available in vanilla js.
  • yread
  • ·
  • 4 hours ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
Hmm maybe i can finally move on from 2.x
Long-time user here. It served me well for years, though I haven't really touched it since the 3.0 days. Glad to see it's still being maintained.
I used jQuery for the past ~ 10 years on smaller apps and I had no problems with it. Then I slowly replaced it with modern JS wherever possible and I found that today I am using jQuery only because Datatables.js depends on it.

It was a nice ride, many thanks to the people that worked and still work on it. Not sure we'll ever see a jQuery 5, but that's life.

I was surprised that for most of my smaller use cases, Zepto.js was a drop-in replacement that worked well. I do need to try the jQuery slim builds, I've never explored that.
Zepto! That's a name I haven't heard in years. I don't remember how it happened but I'm still a member of the ZeptoJS org on Github.
I really like that project! Why don't y'all hand it over to someone willing to do maintenance or at least archive it?
still needs more jQuery
No love for $…?
jQuery is v4 now, but a lot of sites esp. wordpress still have 1.11 or 1.12 and only uses them to either doing modals(popover), show/hide(display), or ajax(fetch).
  • nchmy
  • ·
  • 5 hours ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
WordPress ships with 3.x and is already looking to update to 4
The group photo is a perfect example of why DEI is important
I might argue the opposite. What would that have added to this release?
  • ·
  • 1 hour ago
  • ·
  • [ - ]
Even after migrating to ES modules, jQuery is still somewhat bloated. It is 27 kB (minified + gzipped) [0]. In comparison, Preact is only 4.7 kB [1].

[0]: https://bundlephobia.com/package/jquery@4.0.0

[1]: https://bundlephobia.com/package/preact@10.28.2

> Preact is only 4.7 kB

Is there some outlier place where people using virtual DOM frameworks don't also include 100-200kb of "ecosystem" in addition to the framework?

I suppose anything is possible, but I've never actually seen it. I have seen jQuery only sites. You get a lot for ~27kB.

Look at Deno + Fresh which is based on preact. You can do a lot with preact only
I do that when I need to make a simple SPA. Plain Vue plus a few tiny add-ons of my own.
jQuery does a lot more though, and includes support older browsers.
> includes support older browsers

Which is entirely the issue. Supporting a browser for the 10 users who will update jQuery in 2025 is insane.

Breaking backwards compatibility to turn 27kb into less because of "bloat" makes less sense to me.
It is definitely more than 10 users.
Officially they state they only support 2 latest versions of chrome. But considering their support of IE11, that's actually a lot.