Re: Vendor Prefixes and Generic Prefixes: who shall use which when and why?

Boris Zbarsky:
> On 2/7/12 8:58 AM, Christoph Päper wrote:
>>> only parse other vendors' prefixes in conjunction with parsing unprefixed.
>> 
>> Anything less should not even be considered for discussion.
> 
> The only way to do that is to change the unprefixing policy of this working group and unprefix a whole bunch of things right now.

Fine with me.

>>>  tantek: Request Opera and Microsoft to publish your methodology and what
>>>          properties you're thinking of implementing.
> 
> Robert mailed this list about it in November.

Right, I remember now – did anyone at the FtoF?
<http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Nov/0271.html>

>> Guidelines for Web authors
>> You should not use prefixes at all!
> 
> Good luck.

That guideline, of course, is to be considered in combination with the rules for implementors, which would effectively make only ‘-draft-’ available to authors in the future.

> Did you read the parts of the minutes that discuss what information is being given to web authors by both browser vendors and standards advocates?

Yeah, and I wondered who was meant by that. 

I haven’t been an active web author for a few years now. The only place I frequently read is A List Apart – there were Eric Meyer’s article “Prefix or Posthack” who recommends maintenance and “Stop Forking with CSS3” by Aaron Gustafson which introduces eCSStender, similar to Lea Verou’s “-prefix-free”, and therefore encourages authors not to use prefixes (the script remains a black box to them).

<http://www.alistapart.com/articles/prefix-or-posthack/>
<http://www.alistapart.com/articles/stop-forking-with-css3/>
<http://leaverou.github.com/prefixfree/>

>> Supporting prefixes from a competitor would send the worst imaginable signal here, 
> 
> It's a about a year too late for arguments like this, in my opinion.

I disagree.

> The question is which is least-bad.

Yes, and implementing foreign prefixes is not it in my opinion, especially if nobody knows how it should work better in the future.

>> This discussion should be blocked – at least – until the WG has ultimately decided and written down how prefixes are supposed to be used.
> 
> Given the speed at which this group moves to consensus, this is not acceptable.

Why is it more likely that consensus on the “use foreign prefixes or not” question will form?

> If you're proposing that UAs need to wait another N months, N likely greater than 3, …

I’m not. I consider this topic a top priority right now.

Received on Tuesday, 7 February 2012 17:09:31 UTC