JQuery Hits Cut Phase for Big Gains; Says Goodbye to 6kb

The latest release of JQuery is just full of depreciations, which definitely strays away from the norm of Jquery development. Functions like isWindow, CamelCase and isNumeric have lost their use over time and there is no need to keep in with the mainstream packaging.

What is JQuery?
JQuery is one of the oldest and most used libraries in Javascript. It is able to produce easy-to-use functions for programmers to interact with HTML. It is fully open source so users are not compelled to purchase a license to use it within their products.

A new slim build.

The latest package has been slimmed down by over 6 Kilobytes. The regular package was normally 30 kilobytes and it is now 24 kilobytes. This is due to a lot of irrelevant packages being cut out of the final build.

Is the usage of JQuery declining?
Most cross-browser applications that are published on the internet are likely made using JQuery but there are now more options. The main issue is also that the standard Javascript build now has more of its own features so that third-party packages are no longer being needed. The way browsers process web pages are also changing the relevance of the library by programmers.

The regular JS build now includes the document.querySelector so the callbacks using JQuery is not needed in this instance. Many other examples may be found within programming communities so it is certainly not as popular as before. The irrelevance of these callbacks is also why the JQuery team decided to downsize and future releases will likely be even lighter.

What is keeping JQuery alive in modern programming?

There are still some third-party Javascript projects that still need JQuery to stay alive. EmberJS, which is used to create scalable web applications, is just one of the main examples that rely on this library. BackboneJS, which is another model-view-presenter, also relies on this project. Many of the independent programmers coming out of school are moving away from JQuery so the long-term lifespan does not look to be likely.