Is querySelector supported by all browsers?

Question

I would like to know is querySelector supported by all browsers? is not what's alternate for it to use?

I have tested it with IE8, FF3, Chrome 4. Its fine for me. I do not have old browsers. So i would like to know if old browsers will give problem to me or not?

Globulin

2017 update: querySelector() is very widely supported. Go ahead and use it! – Dixiedixieland

Answer 1

IE7< don't support it and IIRC IE8 has issues with namespaces. There's at least one more esoteric browser out there with major issues but I don't recall which it is.

Basically there is no unified expression-based DOM method, and absolutely your best bet is to use a library (the ubiquitous "use jquery" answer, but you should at least check out Sizzle if you have a problem with large libraries) because rolling your own is more effort than reasonably worthwhile (I speak from experience).

Brilliant

+1 for mentioning Sizzle, the little selector engine used by jQuery and Prototype – Selfinterest

Another selector engine that's worth mentioning: NWMatcher. Sizzle claims "CCS3 Compliance" but has known problems. – Kingcup

2016 update: YES, just use document.querySelector()! :) – Dixiedixieland

@rinogo: No, SAP browser doesn't support it. – Brufsky

@StefanSteiger - I'm not familiar with SAP browser. Do you have figures on the market share of this browser? Nowadays (2017), querySelector() is very widely supported. – Dixiedixieland

@rinogo: No - but SAP-Browser is very old. It's part of some SAP systems/extensions. Probably a very old Java embedded browser control. – Brufsky

Answer 2

QuerySelector is supported on Firefox 3.1+, IE8+ (only in IE8 standards mode), and Safari 3.1+ browsers.

supporting article

Cykana

Answer 3

I tested it with FireFox - It is perfectly work. In IE there is a issue when you use the document with quirk mode (without using DOCTYPE HTML)

Try to use in the HTML document

Biramous

Answer 4

You can check MDN for detail information.

| Feature       | Chrome |  Firefox (Gecko) | Internet Explorer | Opera | Safari (WebKit) |
| ------------- | ------ | ---------------- | ----------------- | ----- | --------------- |
| Basic support |   1    |  3.5             |   8               | 10    |   3.2           |

Suet

Answer 5

The best alternative is to use a third-party library that abstracts all that nasty browser-specific code away, like YUI or jQuery (I'm not as familiar with Prototype et al, so I can't say for sure if it uses the query* methods [when available]).

Geez

PrototypeJS doesn't wrap the DOM with CSS query selection. It is more of an extension to JavaScript as it uses ID names as selectors. Example: <div id="customerOrders"> ~ $('customerOrders'). – Horbal