Re: A List Apart: Articles: Prefix or Posthack

At 5:32 PM -0700 7/10/10, Brad Kemper wrote:

>On Jul 10, 2010, at 4:39 PM, Sylvain Galineau <sylvaing@microsoft.com> wrote:
>
>>  But while it may not fit everyone everywhere, it still sounds like 
>>a reasonable compromise
>>  Between 'support forever' and 'take out that prefix asap'.
>
>Right. Something in between is fine.

    I can agree with that.  I'd prefer "forever" for legacy support 
reasons but it's not a hill I'd be willing to die upon.
    I realized last night that a number of responses in this thread 
amounted to arguing about how to preserve the behavior vendors 
already adopt toward prefixing properties that aren't 
vendor-specific.  Which led me to realize that there may have been 
some confusion about that.
    Truly vendor-specific properties (hypothetically, 
'-ms-office-file-format') should stay prefixed forever.  I don't 
think there's much debate about that.  The only time a prefix can 
ever come off is if a property becomes non-specific; that is, it is 
supported in more than one browser.
    To my way of thinking, though, it's not enough to lose the prefix 
that a property is supported by multiple browsers.  The property must 
also be A) written into a specification; B) testable for 
interoperability; and C) declared to be interoperable by the WG on a 
per-browser basis.  Or rather a per-UA basis, if you want to get 
formal about it.
    As I said before, I accept that prefixes might go away some time 
between ASAP and forever.  Perhaps it would also be a good change to 
shift from "all properties must have gone 'bare'" from an enter-CR 
criterion to an exit-CR.  I could live with that too.
    The main thing, though, is that I want to get us to the point 
where authors get the benefits outlined in the article.  When I 
conceived the process I've advocated, I was sure it would be 
controversial.  When I wrote the article, I prepared for a lot of 
pushback.  Instead, I've been astonished by the overwhelming approval 
authors have expressed.  They perceive this as something that will 
help them.  It's worth pursuing on that basis alone.

-- 
Eric A. Meyer (eric@meyerweb.com)     http://meyerweb.com/

Received on Monday, 12 July 2010 21:29:46 UTC