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Comment by rationably | Hacker News Reader

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.

Also, mobile phones get upgraded/upcycled much faster than desktop.

Fair point.

There are a lot of intranet web applications that require IE, and IE is still in support by Microsoft. Even on Windows 11 Edge still has IE Mode for that reason. IPhones stuck on older iOS version by definition aren’t supported by Apple anymore.

Use those browsers for the internal undead apps, but a modern browser for the Internet.

Those phones are still supported. The most recent iOS 16 update was in September 2025.

It’s rarely a horrid IT department but some special or legacy software without modern replacement

But is this horrid legacy software really going to be pulling in a new major version of jQuery?

> 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

> 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.

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.

They will probably be there for as long as the capacitors last, but the critical thing is that they are almost certainly running some Win32 industrial process software with no need for web browsers or for that matter even Internet connectivity. In fact I hope they’re not on wifi given the state of legacy WinXP security!

Those machines are probably not connected to the internet.

XP support IE8 max

IIRC public counters tend to miss corporate networks.

A jQuery update would miss those quarantined browsers, too.

Are those people/products upgrading jQuery though?

Who is still stuck on IE 11---and why?

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

Microsoft will support IE 11 until 2032.

My reading is that they’ll support Edge’s IE 11 compatibility mode until then, but that IE 11 is already EOLed except for a couple of extremely niche enterprise versions.

The IE 11 desktop application remains supported on a number of Windows LTSC versions: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/windows-itpro-blog/... At least one of them, Windows 10 IoT LTSC, will receive support until 2032.

One of my clients in the past had, as of 2020, noticeable traffic from IE8, 9 and IE11. When I say noticeable I mean 10%+ out of million users.

It followed the 8-17 monday-friday pattern.

Essentially it was people at their work machines (posts, banks, etc) running corporate computers where modern browsers were not installed.

We had a computer for manually testing every release on IE8 and 9.

If somebody is looking for our products from those computers, we aren't gonna lose them.

But as far as I know, that client dropped support for IE8 and IE9 in 2024 with IE11 planned to be dropped this year.

Some corporate machines still run XP. Why upgrade what works?

SECURITY

Yet it would still run Windows Adware edition. =3

Use Enterprise

Enterprise Adware? Sounds hilarious to people that already paid $190 USD/seat to get spammed.

In general, Windows has always belonged on a VM snapshot backing image. =3

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

Last available Chromium on XP has 0-days too, so not a big win.

The goal isn’t to make XP machines more secure, so that’s not a problem.

Microsoft will support IE 11 until 2032 in Windows 10 LTSC and IE Mode in Edge on Windows 11.

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.

it's inspiring

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