Re: [css3-selectors] Proposal for browser specific prefix

On Apr 22, 2011, at 8:15 , Tab Atkins Jr. wrote:

> On Fri, Apr 22, 2011 at 2:06 AM, Alexander Shpack <shadowkin@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Using of four (or more) browser specific properties make css file unreadable.
>> 
>> I propose replace this list
>> 
>> something: foo;
>> -moz-something: foo;
>> -o-something: foo;
>> -webkit-something: foo;
>> -ms-something: foo;
>> ...
>> 
>> by
>> something: foo;
>> *-something: foo;
>> 
>> UA will use standard if it possible, or specific behavior otherwise.
>> 
>> Or, more flexible property declaration:
>> 
>> *something: foo;
>> 
>> Try standard behavior first, or use specific if it possible.
> 
> This has been discussed before.  It suffers from the fact that, when
> browsers differ from the standard in their experimental
> implementations, they quite commonly differ in slightly incompatible
> ways.  Folding them into a single property so that you can't target
> each browser with different code means that the prefix is somewhat
> unusable.

I don't think he's suggesting that the specific-prefixes would stop working, just that there might usefully be an easy way to write "I want the frotz behavior, and it's fine by me if it's standard frotz, -webkit-frotz, -o-frotz, -super-frotz, -barely-frotz, -ms-frotz, or even -totallynew-frotz".

> 
> As has been discussed before, prefix hell serves a very valuable
> purpose.  When all four browsers are prefixing a property, though,
> that's a strong indication that that particular feature should be
> fast-tracked to unprefixed.
> 
> ~TJ
> 

David Singer
Multimedia and Software Standards, Apple Inc.

Received on Friday, 22 April 2011 17:15:00 UTC