JQuery developers have published a plan for the release of new versions of the library.
jQuery 1.8 : will be released within a month.
jQuery 1.9 (beginning of 2013) : removes many interfaces that are obsolete in version 1.8; some of them will remain as plugins or alternative APIs. Support for IE 6/7/8 is preserved.
jQuery 1.9.x (during 2013 and beyond) : version with adding patches, fixing bugs, support for new browsers, etc.
jQuery 2.0 (beginning of 2013, shortly after 1.9) : supports the same APIs as in jQuery 1.9, but deletes the weirdness of IE 6/7/8, such as the event model, “attroperties” in IE7, HTML5shim, etc. .
The goal is that 1.9 and 2.0 should be interchangeable within the supported API sets. When jQuery 2.0 comes out, developers will have a choice of which version to use: do they need IE 6/7/8 support? The jQuery 2.0 version will be smaller and with better performance. Alternatively, you can go directly to jQuery 2.0, but enable jQuery 1.9 download for visitors with old IE.