CSS3 Selector compatibility

[barraponto]

I believe the move to CSS3 selectors has become huge and, so far, Sizzle lacks support to several of the new selectors. The table on http://selectivizr.com/ shows how far behind it is compared to other Javascript frameworks. It shouldn't be too much of a hassle, and it would fix some of the issues in the issue queue.

Edit:

:lang()
:link
:visited
:target
:hover // this requires adding a special event to the DOM in unsupported browsers, we're not going to do this
:nth-last-child
:nth-of-type
:nth-last-of-type
:first-of-type
:last-of-type
:only-of-type
:root

[MarcusJT]

Agreed and upvoted.

(Readers should also see https://github.com/jeresig/sizzle/issues/issue/11 for related discussion on this topic)

[davidmurdoch]

updated link: #11

[jeffbski]

:root is a useful selector, if you are inside of a nested find and want to be able to specify local substitutions and also some at a higher level. Without having access to :root, you can't chain or just deal with a single jquery node.

It simply cleans up the code by being able to have access to :root in your selectors.

[roryokane]

Support for many CSS3 selectors, including :nth-of-type() and :root, was removed on purpose in 2008. See John Resig’s blog post about it, linked from Sizzle’s wiki.

(I currently have no opinion on whether those selectors are worth adding back in.)

[MarcusJT]

"What’s fascinating is that no one has ever, ever, requested that these features be added back in. They have virtually zero real-world use and applicability." - not true anymore.

But regardless, IMHO jQuery should be fully compliant with the full range of selectors as defined in the CSS3 spec as a matter of principle, not to mention that some developers might actually want to use them, and it's perfectly reasonable to expect them to be available, rather than to have to find a workaround, such as a substitute selector engine, or perhaps even a jQuery CSS3 polyfill?!

[MarcusJT]

Note that Keith Clark curates a "jQuery extended selectors" plugin (effectively a jQuery/Sizzle CSS3 polyfill) which might make a good starting point for implementing the missing selectors in jQuery core / Sizzle, though there may of course be opportunities for optimization of performance & code size - see http://www.keithclark.co.uk/labs/jquery-extended-selectors/ & https://github.com/keithclark/JQuery-Extended-Selectors

PS - this once again surely proves that there IS demand for these selectors...?

[barraponto]

"What’s fascinating is that no one has ever, ever, requested that these features be added back in."

Here I am. @MarcusJT thanks for the polyfill.

[timmywil]

Support for :active has been added for 1.8. Other selectors will get more consideration in 1.9 mainly due to time and size constraints. Please upvote your favorite css3 selector that is not yet supported in Sizzle!

[jeffbski]

+1 :root - my thoughts are above

[timmywil]

Currently, the unsupported selectors are

:link
:visited
:target
:hover // this requires adding a special event to the DOM in unsupported browsers, we're not going to do this
:nth-last-child
:nth-of-type
:nth-last-of-type
:first-of-type
:last-of-type
:only-of-type
:root

I am currently +1 for :link, and don't feel too strongly about the rest.

Note: The link in this ticket from selectivizr is no longer accurate. We do accomodate for empty-string attributes in 1.8.

[barraponto]

:target would be handy. :XXXX-of-type is useful.

[Yaffle]

@barraponto, :XXXX-of-type too slow to be usefull