$('input').attr('type', newVal) SHOULD throw in ALL browsers.

$('input').attr('type', newVal) SHOULD throw in ALL browsers.

jQuery is here to normalize browser differences. If jQuery 1.9 supports oldIE, changing input type should throw in all browsers for consistency. I think the initial intuition here was correct. If you want to change input type without having an error thrown in modern browsers, you can just drop down to regular javascript and use .setAttribute('type' .. 

RIGHT?