Re: Vendor Prefix solutions

On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 4:48 PM, Matthew Wilcox <elvendil@gmail.com> wrote:

> But, the main problem really is that vendors are shipping support for
> experimental features in production, public targeted, browsers. Can we
> not suggest vendors come to a mutual agreement to lock prefixes to
> development builds, and remove them from public shipping builds? This
> stops the uneducated developer being able to mis-use experimental
> features, whilst allowing knowledgable developers to experiment in
> safety. It also forces a progressive-enhancement mentality. And stops
> browser vendor competition 'point scoring' which is causing long-term
> harm.
>

I disagree that this is a problem. The inexperience of a developer should
not be a reason to hinder innovation. The tedious exercise of having to
list many prefixes for different browsers provides a deterrent, fulfilling
the dual purpose of making a developer think twice and providing the
browser vendors the ability to push boundaries in a safe sandbox. Putting
vendor prefixes only in dev builds effectively means the features won't be
used, and stalls the entire standards process.