When jQuery 3.0 was released, it did not feel like the kind of update that would make a client notice anything immediately. The website would not suddenly look different because the library version changed. The more interesting part was what the release represented. jQuery was beginning to move away from some of the old browser workarounds that had shaped front-end development for years.
That mattered because jQuery had become the practical layer many developers relied on to smooth over browser differences. For a long time, that was its real strength. It gave you a predictable way to select elements, handle events, animate parts of the interface and make Ajax requests without writing different code for every browser. By 2016, the browser landscape had moved enough that some of those older compromises were starting to feel less central.
Why jQuery Was Still Useful
It became fashionable in some circles to talk as if jQuery was already finished, but that did not match the reality of many projects. A huge number of websites still used it, and plenty of client work still benefited from the simplicity it provided. A small interaction did not always need a component framework. Sometimes a clear event listener and a class change were enough.
The reason jQuery stayed useful was that it solved ordinary problems quickly. Menus, accordions, form enhancements, sliders and small Ajax behaviours were still common in everyday websites. For those tasks, jQuery remained easy to read and easy to hand over, especially on sites where the rest of the stack was not JavaScript-heavy.
What Changed With 3.0
The interesting part of jQuery 3.0 was the move towards a slimmer, more modern foundation. Removing old Internet Explorer workarounds was not just a technical clean-up. It reflected a wider shift in web development, where newer browser APIs were becoming dependable enough that libraries could stop carrying quite so much historical weight.
That does not mean upgrading should be careless. A mature website can have years of plugins, scripts and small behaviours depending on particular quirks. Changing the version of a core library can expose code that nobody has touched for a long time. I would always rather test that properly than assume a version number upgrade is a simple maintenance task.
The Plugin Problem
The biggest difficulty with jQuery projects is often not the code I wrote myself. It is the collection of plugins added over time. A gallery plugin, a form plugin, a legacy slider and a custom script might all depend on jQuery in slightly different ways. One might be maintained. Another might not have been updated for years. That makes upgrades more operational than technical.
Before moving a client site to jQuery 3.0, I would want to know what depends on it. Which plugins are active? Which scripts are custom? Which behaviours matter commercially? A broken animation is annoying, but a broken checkout, enquiry form or account flow is a much bigger issue. The upgrade path needs to respect that difference.
Retrospective Thoughts
Retrospectively, jQuery 3.0 felt like a reminder that old tools do not disappear just because new patterns arrive. React, Angular and other frameworks were getting more attention, but jQuery still sat inside a large part of the web. That means the work of maintaining those sites still matters.
For me, the sensible position is not to defend jQuery everywhere or remove it everywhere. It is to understand the role it plays in a particular project. If it is solving simple interaction problems cleanly, that may be fine. If it has become the place where years of unstructured behaviour have accumulated, the version upgrade is probably a good excuse to review the front-end properly.