jQuery 1.3 just came out, and I must say I’m really looking forward to trying it out. They seem to have made some really great performance improvements, and “live events” will definitely come in handy.

The thing that most caught my eye, however, was the new use of feature detection instead of browser detection. There is an article I read several months back that outlines the concept very well (referring to it as “bug detection”). It’s great to see a framework implement this, as it’s a powerful way to free browser developers from having to leave in their bugs to keep sites working on their browsers (ironic, isn’t it?).

What made me chuckle is looking at the jQuery.support page that outlines what “features” are detected. There are 11 features looked it, and the only time any of them are false are in IE. 8 of them are false in all versions of IE, one is only in IE7, another is in IE 6–8, and the last is in IE 6 and 7 when in Quirks Mode. I always figured that all browsers had compliance issues that required hacks, and IE was just worse, but this makes me wonder: is IE the only one with problems regarding CSS/JS compatibility?