Transcription
that it was updated [music] for the first time in 10 years. This is amazing. This same library is not needed by anyone. [music] >> [music] [music] [music] >> Let's try together to recall the most popular JavaScript library or framework today. Someone will say React, someone for some reason will name Angular, maybe LAsh or Mutols or some JSE. In the end, all that I have listed are popular, of course, libraries, popular frameworks, popular tools, but they are not the most popular. And the most popular JavaScript framework, which some call a framework, although it is a library, has been around for 20 years, probably, or around that, is JQuery.
In the distant 2013 or 2012, I had a presentation called Life Without jQuery. And there I was already reasoning about the fact that modern browsers can do everything that jQuery can. Accordingly, the need for this library completely disappeared. Since then, I have encountered it only once for work. When I moved to the Netherlands, I had a project that needed to be rewritten from Legacy JSP Frontend to React. And in the JSP frontend, JQU was used, with two different versions simultaneously. I have never encountered it again, neither for my projects nor for work, but, strangely enough, it continued to live, and since 2016 it has stopped being updated, remaining the most popular library in the world. And in early 2026, a major update is released, version 4.0. And this is quite strange. However, given that it is a popular library, it is also strange that it has not been updated for a long time.
What has changed in it? Well, firstly, we can state that Internet Explorer has finally died, because support for version ten and everything that was before is being removed from jQuery. This, in fact, was one of the main features of this library, when all browsers were absolutely different, with absolutely different engines. There was direct competition, they all worked with JavaScript a little differently. And libraries like M Tools or jQuery helped to have a unified syntax in all browsers. And here I would like to say that, unfortunately, now we live in a world where everyone uses Chrome or something based on Chrome. There are individual people who, for some reason, still use Firefox. And, of course, there are a huge number of people who use it in tandem because it is pre-installed on Macs. But at the same time, all modern browsers can do more or less the same thing, they do it approximately the same way. And those browsers that did things differently, these Internet Explorers, they are no longer needed by anyone, no one installs them, and it is practically impossible to use the internet with them.
At the same time, support for version eleven of Explorer has been retained, but slightly. They say that in JQuery version 5.0 it will be removed. Of course, if version 5.0 does not come out in another 10 years, then quite soon, in theory, Internet Explorer 11 will go down in history. The library itself is becoming modular and supports these ECMAScript modules or ES Modules standards, and this means that it is becoming more modern. And it also means that if you import some function, then in your final JavaScript file, it will not be the entire jQuery, but only the function or functions that you use. And a huge number of functions have also been removed that simply duplicate the built-in functionality of all modern browsers. jQuery isray, jQuery Pars Jason, jQueryam, jQuery now, jQuery Type, as well as three functions that are not in the official documentation, but they are still in jQuery. These are functions for working with arrays, such as Push, Splicй and Sort. Well, because they are present in any browser today within JavaScript. And separate libraries for pushing to an array are not needed today.
Another serious change is working with CSS. You can no longer just specify a number as a value, and pixels will be put there automatically or will be substituted there automatically. Now all units must always be specified. And if you need 20 pixels, then you will have to write not 20, but literally 20 pixels, as in all other libraries. All this, of course, is cool and wonderful, but one can ask the question: who needs this at all? Who today in 2026 needs JQUery or needs the JQuery library, and even more so its updated version? You remember, at the very beginning of the video, I said that JQuery is the most popular JavaScript library in the world. It is still present on almost 70% of websites on the internet, and this means that there are at least 70% of developers in the world who may need this update. The library authors literally say so: JQuery 4.0 is needed by those who use jQuery 3 or earlier versions so that their JavaScript [music] works faster and is not overloaded with unnecessary functionality. So, if for some reason you are using jQuery, switch [music] to the new version. It is theoretically faster and better. Yeah.