Re: wading into the Prefix morass...

* David Singer wrote:
>It doesn't seem to help the web community much to ask them to write N
>similar 'vendor-specific' constructs for case (b), when, in fact, they
>are all (trying to) implement the same specification.

There are only two kinds of features, standard features and proprietary
extensions. Standard features do not use prefixes, and relying too much
on proprietary extensions is harmful. The complaints about prefixes just
say "harmful thing hurts", and that is by design: one of the reasons for
vendor prefixes is that it is easy to see when you use a proprietary
feature, so you can expect harm coming your way when use them in excess.

The solution is standardization: take the most popular proprietary ex-
tensions and turn them into standard features. Authors are complaining
because browser vendors spend too much on the development of proprietary
extensions relative to what they spend on standardization. You could
look at the use of prefixes for features as a part of standardization,
but at the moment browser vendors largely use them as replacement for
standardization.

Any proposal with respect to vendor prefixes has to explain how it will
aid standardization, development of standard features without prefixes.
Or it would have to explain how we are better off without standards. I
do not see either in your proposal.
-- 
Björn Höhrmann · mailto:bjoern@hoehrmann.de · http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de
Am Badedeich 7 · Telefon: +49(0)160/4415681 · http://www.bjoernsworld.de
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Received on Tuesday, 21 February 2012 21:12:30 UTC