Re: Unprefixing CSS properties

On 11/17/2011 01:55 AM, Florian Rivoal wrote:
>
> Not too long ago, Elika posted this:
> http://fantasai.inkedblade.net/weblog/2011/inside-csswg/process
>
> If we want to try your approach of dropping prefixes earlier than CR, the
> stage described there as "Stabilizing" may be a good candidate to be
> the level of maturity we want. It probably needs to be formalized a little
> bit, so that the borders are less fuzzy.

The "stabilizing" phase is pretty short: it usually consists of one or
two drafts: LC and maybe a pre-LC WD to check with www-style for any
last comments before we initiate LC. Not worth tweaking the process for.

The thing that needs to happen is branching the spec more often, and
we *are* starting to do this now that CSS2.1 is completed. I think a
4-months cycle to CR is a bit ridiculous, as specs tend to need a lot
more in the way of revision and review cycles than a single WD. In
some specific well-defined cases that's workable (small features that
affect the processing model but not layout), but it's imo way too
rushed in the general case.

As for Henri's proposal of maintaining multiple features that do the
same thing with varying levels of brokenness in order to drop prefixes
as soon as implementations exist... that is weighting immediate
gratification far too heavily against the coherency, understandability,
and implementability of CSS going forward.

> The benefit of pushing unprefixing earlier along the track is that it may
> also serve as a hint to the working group about when is the best time to
> look into changing the syntax. The recent debates on linear and radial
> gradient syntaxes are useful, but they certainly come quite late.

That's mainly my fault for not reviewing the Gradients portion
of the draft earlier. Generally-speaking, if I haven't reviewed
a draft in depth, when I get around to it, there are going to
be Comments. So shoot me. [1]

[1] This will result in a drastic reduction in substantive comments
     on any specs heading to CR, thus solving the problem of drafts
     taking too long to get to CR.

~fantasai

Received on Wednesday, 23 November 2011 05:29:02 UTC