status of $.browser

status of $.browser


Sorry to reignite this debate in a new thread rather than replying to
the old one, but for some reason Google Groups wouildn't let me reply
to the old one. The suggestion was that the jQuery documentation be
reworded so that $.browser not be called 'Deprecated', but that its
usage perhaps be discouraged. I'd strongly support this rewording,
John et al... could we please see it in the next version of the jQuery
docs?
I'm not sure I'd even go as far as 'strongly discouraging' the use of
this property; sometimes it's a lot quicker and more convenient to use
it than feature detection, and/or the feature detection just isn't
there. For instance I'm developing a webpage and I happen to know
that IE7 doesn't support the 'before' or 'after' pseudo selectors... I
just want to detect whether this is IE7 and behave accordingly, as I
can leave the other browsers alone and not need to emulate this css in
Javascript. So for this reason I'd really like to see things reworded
as something like 'please try to use $.support, but this can be used
if necessary;. Also I'd like to see that word Deprecated dropped; it
has a particular meaning in programming, which generally implies that
it has been 100% obsoleted by something else and may well be dropped
in a future release. I don't think this applies or should apply to
$.browser, so it should not be called Deprecated.
Best regards,
Jeremy Morton (Jez)