RE: Policy for one vendor using the vendor-prefix from another vendor?

Prefixes are intended for experimental and proprietary features. In this case, it is a proprietary feature of Webkit that is used by enough content that it becomes attractive to be compatible with. Although it is not the direction we would like to see as a standards group, it is conceptually no different from third parties opening PDF or RTF files...

(I am not directly involved in IE mobile, this is my own opinion)

Alex
 
-----Original Message-----
From: www-style-request@w3.org [mailto:www-style-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Simon Fraser
Sent: Tuesday, May 11, 2010 12:03 PM
To: www-style@w3.org list
Subject: Policy for one vendor using the vendor-prefix from another vendor?

We've noticed that IE Mobile for Windows has implemented support for property with a -webkit-prefix:
<http://blogs.msdn.com/iemobile/archive/2010/05/10/javascript-and-css-changes-in-ie-mobile-for-windows-phone-7.aspx>

We believe that by convention, vendor prefixes are owned by the relevant vendor, and that vendors supporting each others prefixes undermines the vendor prefix system. A vendor should be able to change the behavior of a vendor-prefixed property at any time, without having to worry about another vendor who is squatting on the same prefix.

You may argue that if a vendor implements the prefix from another vendor, they do so entirely at their own risk. However, there's always a risk that such a cross-vendor prefix usage becomes widely enough deployed that a change in behavior by the original vendor would have too significant consequences, leading to unwanted lock-in. This we would like to avoid.

I propose that the section on vendor prefixes here <http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-syntax/#vendor-specific>
should strongly discourage cross-vendor prefix usage.

Simon

Received on Tuesday, 11 May 2010 19:29:58 UTC