Re: vendor prefix properties diverging from official properties

On Feb 26, 2010, at 12:41 PM, François REMY wrote:

> I strongly agree.
> 
> It would be a great benefit for everyone if we could
> use -wd-border-radius instead of a combinaison of
> -moz-border-radius and -webkit-border-radius.
> 
> Browser prefixes remains great for features that are
> browser-related or that are not part of any working
> draft, but for features browser would like to introduce
> in the real world, a -wd- prefix seems better.
> 
> Regards,
> François
> 
> [BTW, I don't like 'draft' as it's too long to type, nor
> '-w3c-'  since it would mean that w3c properties are
> not well defined and implemented by browsers, while
> the objective of the w3c is the complete opposite.
> '-wd-' seems better to my.]

In principle, having a common prefix on CSS-draft properties sounds like a sensible idea, and certainly apperas to reduce author confusion and effort.

In practice, however, there are serious problems with the proposal. The key here is that a browser implementation of a CSS draft property is a snapshot in time of the specification of that property at the time of implementation. If the draft is revised, it's not the case that all browsers suddenly revise their implementations to match; not only is there a limit on engineering time, but browsers typically have 6-12mo release cycles, so implementation is bound to lag specification.

So having -w3c-image-fit is no more a guarantee of a particular behavior for an author than -moz-image-fit or -webkit-image-fit; in fact, it's probably less so. 

The logical solution would be to version the property name so that the author knows what they are getting:

-w3c-20061010-image-fit

but I don't think anyone would want that.

So I'm really not sure that having a common prefix buys us any more convenience for authors.

Simon

Received on Tuesday, 2 March 2010 21:12:37 UTC