Re: [css3-images] Changing the angles in gradients

On 18/05/2011 2:42 PM, Brad Kemper wrote:
>
> On May 17, 2011, at 8:08 PM, Eric A. Meyer wrote:
>
>> At 16:27 -0700 5/17/11, Brad Kemper wrote:
>>
>>> On May 17, 2011, at 3:33 PM, "Eric A. Meyer"<eric@meyerweb.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> That's why we have prefixes, as far as I'm concerned-- to let
>>>> implementors fix bugs and keep pace with changing specs.
>>>
>>> How does that help authors who are already using prefixes for 4
>>> browsers, and users who update at different paces? It doesn't.
>>> The authors would have to remove all the prefixed gradients, and
>>> rely only on the raster images that they had in there as
>>> fallbacks.
>>
>> Of course it doesn't help them, but we can't save everyone.  As
>> I've said in the past, the alternative is that we wait for an
>> unprefixed incompatibility to get deadlocked by "we can't change
>> this now, we have customers with web sites that we can't break",
>
> I'm saying we would need a pretty darn good reason to change it even
> now. And I don't think we have one.


Yes he does. You have just snipped them out. I will re-include them into 
this thread.

1. Reliving the late 90's all over again. DOCTYPE switching got us out 
of that mess once. It is very, very unlikely that it could do so again.

2. It was pretty awful (DOCTYPE switching), and we still deal with 
echoes of it today, ten years after a desperate maneuver rescued CSS.


A similar crisis was avoided in 2008 with the IE8 meta debacles (Eric 
was in the pro camp that would have added a meta on top of a DOCTYPE for 
IE). I believe that Eric has learned from both experiences. I fully 
support his reasoning also for vendor prefixes.

I am writing this now even thought I know that there is an error in the 
implementation of values in gradients for 'linear-gradient' in Firefox 4 
and also errors in the implementation of 'repeating-linear-gradient' in 
Chrome 11 and IE10. The former error could be used as a way around the 
issue you mention below.

Please allow me time to raise these issues in the threads titled 
'[css3-images] exactly 2 adjacent colors stops' and 'Gradients and 
background-repeat (Was: Re: Automatic spec annotations)'.


> Sure, things change while the
> thing is indexed, but the changes usually don't make the thing act in
> the opposite manner to the way it did in a major recent release of
> the second-most-used browser. For the site I work on, I would end up
> needing to remove -moz-linear-gradient from wherever I have it, and
> wait until most of my audience was no longer using Firefox 4 anymore
> before I employed it again.


That the consequence for authors using experimental properties with 
prefixes. A question..., how long has Firefox 4 been out (auto updating 
from Firefox 3.6)? The answer is two weeks.

Here is the bug in Firefox 4.0.1.

http://css-class.com/test/bugs/gecko/2-0/angle-linear-gradient-bug.htm


I do suggest that when this bug is fixed, the angles of gradient can be 
changed at the same time. If this happens, then you know how to exploit 
this current bug by using two vendor prefixes for Gecko.


> As to -webkit-linear-gradient, I don't think it is
> in any releases of Safari other than nightly downloads (I could be
> wrong), but apparently Chrome 10 does, so it wouldn't be safe to use
> that prefixed version either (until most people had replaced Chrome
> 10 with Chrome 11 or whatever). This path is pure folly, IMO.


Depend on how fast Chrome 11 is shipped.

BTW, I still need to give my own feedback for this topic. I will do this 
after dinner.



-- 
Alan Gresley
http://css-3d.org/
http://css-class.com/

Received on Wednesday, 18 May 2011 09:14:09 UTC