Yesterday I discovered what I thought to be a bug in jQuery. See the snippet below which highlights the issue I ran in to.
var textInputs = $('input:text'); // OK
var submitInputs = $('input:submit'); // OK
var checkboxInputs = $('input:checkbox'); // OK
var searchInputs = $('input:search'); // Syntax error, unrecognized expression: search
This error is also thrown when trying to select any of the newer inputs introduced in HTML5 in a similar pseudo selector fashion.
Naturally I started looking through the docs but couldn’t find a mention anywhere regarding the new HTML5 inputs. Something which I found suprising considering how prevalent the use of HTML5 is now.
After some digging on Google, I unearthed an old ticket on jQuery’s bug tracker asking to support the above pseudo selector notation in order to maintain consistency across its API. However the idea was shot down due to the way older browsers handle inputs they can’t interpret(they fallback to text fields) which is a fair argument.
What I don’t understand is how the same selector wrote in a slightly different way is supported.
var searchInputs= $('input[type=search]'); // OK
There are three things I want out of an API:
- Well tested
- Well documented
- Consistent
Now come on guys get onboard with the latter, either make this happen or deprecate pseudo selector support entirely.
DISCLAIMER: I still love jQuery.