Re: Unprefixing CSS properties

On 11/21/11 8:46 AM, Jon Rimmer wrote:
> Fair enough, this could happen, but the impact is likely to be
> vanishingly small.

That hasn't been the case in the past.  The only way it will be in the 
future is if people are _very_ careful to make it the case.

> Any significant change to feature behaviour will
> almost certainly result in syntax changes.

Again, not true in the past.

> Any change that retains
> syntax compatibility is likely to be around edge cases and affect
> almost no deployed code.

There have been changes to basic functionality from experimental 
implementation to spec (like what "width: 50px" or "box-shadow: 10px" 
mean) that changed no syntax at all and merely changed what the meaning 
of a length was.

> Take border-radius for example

Yes, in the case of border-radius there haven't been any incompatible 
changes that preserved the syntax.  That hasn't been uniformly true.

Note that this is why we feel that unprefixing border-radius should be 
OK: the common cases are all already interoperable, so any remaining 
changes shouldn't break content if/when they happen.

> In any case, all this is really just a distraction from the main
> point. What's needed isn't different or clearer guidance for prefixes,
> it's something better to replace them.

I think we should distinguish between two separate things:

1)  What's needed to deal with the existing properties that are prefixed 
but largely interoperable.  That's what Robert's proposal is about.

2)  What's needed going forward for new things UAs plan to implement.

Those are two fairly different discussions.

> If you don't believe authors think about fallback, when the most
> popular desktop browser version supports almost none of these
> experimental features, you're crazy.

Ah, you used the magic word "desktop".  Lots of authors nowadays are 
writing code that's meant for "mobile" sites and doesn't work right in 
_any_ "desktop" browser.

So yes, lots of authors think about fallback.  Lots more don't think 
about it at all.

> Great, because the status quo is hurting both. I look forward to your
> contributions on a replacement for prefixes.

I'm a lot more interested in discussion #1 above than discussion #2 
right this moment, actually.  That's what this thread started off being 
about, and I'd appreciate it if we could try to stick on topic...

-Boris

Received on Monday, 21 November 2011 15:06:00 UTC