Re: Suggestion for generic CSS vendor prefix

On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 5:48 PM, Brad Kemper <brad.kemper@gmail.com> wrote:
> On the other hand, you have properties like 'border-image' that was pretty
> stable before it went through a major change which was incompatible with
> experimental implements. I don't think that could have been predicted. And
> naturally I, for one, wouldn't have wanted it prevented due to widespread
> use of the existing version for iPhone buttons. Or what if border-radius had
> been unprefixed before the issue of percentages had been settled, or when
> the individual corners were specified differently for different browsers? I
> think CR is when it is stable enough to be unprefixed.

You could ask the exact same questions about CR.  What if we want to
make a major change to a property after it hits CR?  Answer: we don't,
too late.  We have to draw the line somewhere.  Currently the line is
drawn based on totally unrelated features that happen to be in the
same spec, which sometimes leads to specs languishing in WD for a very
long time when some of their features are already interoperably
implemented.

For what it's worth, HTML5 is using a piece-by-piece stability
approach.  It has to, because the spec is so huge.  CSS3 specs are
smaller, but the same problems occur -- just less acutely.  One
feature should not hold back another feature's implementation
progress, even if current W3C procedure requires it to hold back the
formal status of the draft.

Received on Sunday, 28 March 2010 22:54:47 UTC