jQuery 2.0 is released after 10 months development. jQuery 2.0 is customized for modern web browsers and also considers about mobile devices. But one big change is that jQuery 2.0 will not be compatible with old versions of IE and its size is 10% less than the version 1.9.1. The execution efficiency is higher as well. jQuery 1.9.x will still be maintained by jQuery team, they will also provide update for it. Those websites which want to be compatible with all browsers should not upgrade to jQuery 2.0.
From its official blog, jQuery team released some new features of jQuery 2.0:
No more support for IE 6/7/8: Remember that this can also affect IE9 and even IE10 if they are used in their “Compatibility View” modes that emulate older versions. To prevent these newer IE versions from slipping back into prehistoric modes, we suggest you always use an X-UA-Compatible tag or HTTP header. If you can use the HTTP header it is slightly better for performance because it avoids a potential browser parser restart.
Reduced size: The final 2.0.0 file is 12 percent smaller than the 1.9.1 file, thanks to the elimination of patches that were only needed for IE 6, 7, and 8. We had hoped to remove even more code and increase performance, but older Android/WebKit 2.x browsers are now the weakest link. We’re carefully watching Android 2.x market share to determine when we can cross it off the support list, and don’t expect it to take very long.
Custom builds for even smaller files: This feature has been greatly refined and extended since its debut in jQuery 1.8. You can now exclude combinations of 12 different modules to create a custom version that is even smaller. A new minimal selector engine, basically a thin wrapper around the browser’s querySelectorAll
API, lets you shrink the build to less than 10KB when minified and gzipped. See the README for instructions on how to create a custom build, and remember that any plugins you use will also need to stick to the subset you select.
jQuery 1.9 API equivalence: jQuery 2.0 is API-compatible with 1.9, which means that all of the changes documented in thejQuery 1.9 Upgrade Guide have been applied to jQuery 2.0 as well. If you haven’t yet upgraded to jQuery 1.9, you may want to try that first. Be sure to use the jQuery Migrate plugin.
In the coming few months jQuery team may still release the upgraded 1.x version 1.10, but because of resource limitation, 1.1x branch will be separated from 2.0 branch and jQuery team will put more effort on the version 2..0 development.
You can find complete release post from jQuery blog.
Source : http://www.36kr.com/p/202715.html