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Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about the CSSWG -webkit- Discussions (AKA Minutes and Resolutions Paris F2F 2012 / Telecon 2012-02-15: Vendor Prefixes and -webkit-, Property Aliasing)

-webkit- Problem

It should be noted that this has been a topic of passionate discussion, and that it will take awhile not only for the CSSWG to agree on and execute a plan of action, but even for the Members to understand the nuances of each others’ positions. For example, Mozilla, Opera, and Microsoft are aligned on there being a problem that desperately needs addressing, potentially with desperate measures; but not on the exact details of what is problematic or how exactly to address which parts.

Part I: Monday

Discussed problem of WebKit monopoly on mobile and the consequent pressure for other engines to implement -webkit- properties. See also Tantek’s questions on designing a course of action.

Full minutes

Part II: Tuesday

Discussed specific actions WG can take to ameliorate the situation. Three approaches are available; chairs assert the WG can use all as needed:

• Dropping prefixes before CR (via legacy clause in the prefixing policy documented at /TR/CSS)
• Splitting specs to move stable features faster (as is being done with CSS3 Text)
• Asking the chairs to assign high priority to those features (as done with CSS2.1 leading up to its REC)

Full minutes

Part III: Wednesday

• Brief discussion of whether to drop prefixes pre-CR for Transforms, Transitions, and/or Animations.

Full minutes

Part IV: Telecon

Discussed -webkit- prefixing situation and how to move forward on Transforms. Considerations included:

• whether to exceptionally unprefix transforms immediately or follow through with the process to CR.
• whether Transforms spec needed to be split into SVG/CSS or 2D/3D or some other way.
• whether to move to CR while deferring all issues raised by the merge
• whether to publish LCWD immediately, how long of an LC period would be
  required, and how long it would take to finish resolving the issues

No consensus positions were found, and all parties left the telecon frustrated.

Time estimates for finishing work on Transforms however were agreed to be within 2-3 months if appropriately prioritized.

Full minutes. Anyone interested in this topic should also read the www-style follow-up by Sylvain Galineau (Microsoft).

Aliasing

Aliases are used both for vendor prefixed / unprefixed property pairs as well as for the word-wrap/overflow-wrap property and for the page-break-* properties (which are aliased to break-*). We discussed what, exactly, aliasing means:

• Resolved: When a browser supports multiple syntaxes of a single property, they’re treated as aliases in the cascade, such that last wins. In the OM, all variants show up, with equivalent values, regardless of which version was specified or which won.
• Resolved: The last resolution applies to WG-approved aliases. It MAY be used by browsers for handling prefixed versions as well.
• Resolved: When value aliases are supported, return the version that the author provided.
• Resolved: In media query feature strings, also return the version that the author provided.

Full minutes

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• Develop in the Cloud - Keith Dawson - The State of Mobile Browser Monoculture 2012-07-25 13:07:57 [...] this confluence of technology. With Webkit's dominance, many mobile developers were becoming lazy, according to this post on the CSS WG Blog. (A post on QuirksBlog holds that the problem is not a Webkit monoculture, but rather a blindness [...]
• Browser Makers Caving to Vendor Prefix Misuse | Adrian Roselli 2015-06-02 22:07:22 […] Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about the CSSWG -webkit- Discussions (AKA Minutes and Resolutions… from the W3C CSS Working Group blog. […]