In response to Mozilla seriously considering implementing -webkit prefixes in Firefox, Remy Sharp is calling out Browser makers and saying that vendor prefixes need to die.
My Idea
Before I decide to agree or disagree with either of those possibilities, I wanted to put forth my idea that browsers should add vendor prefixes to everything. I realize this is a rather asinine and eccentric idea, but I consider it useful in the way the now defunct conditional comments worked for me to solve Internet Explorer challenges.
For example, Firefox had an annoying rendering issue with buttons that required me to use this “elegant” solution (with brevity added):
@-moz-document url-prefix() {
button { padding: 3px; }
}
I would have much rather written: button { -moz-padding: 3px; }
I’m willing to hold the opinion that this could be awful in practice, but it would have solved that particular problem with much less bullshit. It might even be useful to do something along the lines of button { -moz-9.0-padding: 3px; } to specifically call out the version of Gecko I wanted to target, because the exact issue I mention above was fixed in a version after I wrote my hack and now I’m in the unfortunate position of having CSS that works in old browsers, but breaks in newer ones. Fuck.
So… Do I agree? Should Mozilla adopt the -webkit vendor prefix?
In my opinion, if Mozilla adopts the -webkit prefix within Gecko then they may as well kill Gecko and adopt WebKit itself. At which point, why do they even exist?
Should vendor prefixes die?
In principle, yes. But I sincerely doubt we’ll ever see a world where browser vendors and the various working groups get their shit together well enough to actually solve the standards problem. In the mean time designers and developers will continue to use and abuse what’s available to them because that’s how people work. If it’s there, its theirs.
“How do you know it’s a priority? Because it got done.”
“How do you know it’s a standard? Because it’s in the Browser.”
In reality, I still have to work around that damned Internet Explorer. Furthermore, I’m of the opinion that IE6 being the standard we worked with and fought against for so long was the best thing to ever happen to Web Design, as it became a craft during that era. Now? We’re spoiled.
What will happen is that this whole kerfuffle will collapse into a better solution within the next year or two. WebKit is already the standard — it’s just not very evenly distributed.
