Re: The perils of prefixing... or rather trying to unprefix

On Tuesday 2012-11-06 11:45 -0800, Boris Zbarsky wrote:
> On 11/6/12 11:28 AM, Sebastian Zartner wrote:
> >In this case you kept the prefixed properties
> >together with the unprefixed ones. This should always be done, but
> >wasn't done by Mozilla before for other previously prefixed properties.
> 
> I believe our policy is to keep support for the prefixed version for
> some limited time alongside the unprefixed version, assuming the
> prefixed version ever shipped in a final release.  Do you have any
> examples of us not following the policy?  My initial searches are
> not coming up with any.

I don't think it's a general policy.

If there's no need to keep support for a prefixed feature for
compatibility, we shouldn't do so; keeping it longer just creates a
risk that there will be a need to keep it for compatibility.  This
might be the case, for example, if it's only shipped prefixed for a
very short period of time.

That said, this isn't the issue here.  If we have Web compatibility
problems due to failing to keep supporting the prefixed feature for
a bit of time after adding support for the unprefixed one, we can
always fix those by supporting the prefixed feature for some time.

On the other hand, we don't intend to support prefixed features
permanently after unprefixing, so we may well run into some
compatibility problems when we actually drop support for the
prefixed features.  And I expect that with transforms, transitions,
and animations, there will be some such problems.

-David

-- 
𝄞   L. David Baron                         http://dbaron.org/   𝄂
𝄢   Mozilla                           http://www.mozilla.org/   𝄂

Received on Sunday, 11 November 2012 22:58:29 UTC