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Load jQuery without using conditional comments.

Based on the BBC's Responsive News method of 'cutting the mustard' you can conditionally load the correct version of jQuery for your visitors.

The BBC’s Responsive News is a great source of how to deal with everyday front end problems because they have to solve them for a much larger audience.

      
        if('querySelector' in document
      
          && 'localStorage' in window
      
          && 'addEventListener' in window) {
      
          // Add jQuery 2.0+
      
          document.write('<script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"><\/script>')
      
        } else {
      
          // Add jQuery 1.9.0+
      
          document.write('<script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.11.1/jquery.min.js"><\/script>')
      
        }

view raw loadjquery.js hosted with ❤ by GitHub

There is an excellent slidedeck which gives more context to the above code as well as many more useful techniques.

Posted August 16, 2014

	if('querySelector' in document
	&& 'localStorage' in window
	&& 'addEventListener' in window) {
	// Add jQuery 2.0+
	document.write('<script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"><\/script>')
	} else {
	// Add jQuery 1.9.0+
	document.write('<script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.11.1/jquery.min.js"><\/script>')
	}