As of 1.3 $.browser is listed as deprecated in support of jQuery.support. The thinking is that developers should be basing their checks on functionality instead of user agent strings.
I think this is throwing a lot of novice jQuery users as they see the word deprecated and think that they shouldn't use it as the method is going away. From my understanding that method isn't going away. ( http://osdir.com/ml/misc/2009-01/msg00001.html "*According to John R, $.browser and version will remain in the core indefinitely, despite being deprecated...*") For some cases it's really difficult to determine what piece of functionality to use to get the desired result. For instance, today, I noticed a coworker used $.browser.safari to build code specific to a Safari issue we were having. Knowing that $.browser was listed as deprecated I went to find the correct way to segment out safari using $.support() unfortunately based on the docs I found this to be impossible to easily determine which is the best approach to use and I am still not sure it's possible. I did some research to see if there was an easy way to segment Safari from the rest using $.support() and found this thread on Stack Overflow that seems to support developer confusion on the issue. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/584285/detecting-ie6-using-jquery-support Developers want to do the right thing and listing the method as deprecated flags the developer to avoid that method at all costs. I think it would be better to list the method as not a "best practice" instead of deprecated and explain why functionality checks are better then user agent sniffing. Also it would be good to flush out some scenarios for developers to use which functionality test for certain browsers and certain scenarios. Thoughts? Am I off base on this? Ralph --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "jQuery Development" group. To post to this group, send email to jquery-dev@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to jquery-dev+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/jquery-dev?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
