Friday, May 4, 2012

Reading List

Reading List:


Vendor bloody prefixes


As you may have noticed, Opera announced an experimental Labs build supporting a handful of -webkit- vendor prefixes, based on an idea originally suggested by Daniel Glazman, CSS Working Group co-chair:

The rule should be this one: if the CSS parser encounters a prefixed property for another browser, honour that property as if it were prefixed for us UNLESS an unprefixed or prefixed for us valid declaration for that property was already set. That would drastically reduce the problems on the Web.

Here are some of the most useful commentaries (both for and against). Mostly I haven’t commented, except for Andy Clark’s piece which contained factual inaccuracies which could mislead readers.

  • Opera confirms WebKit prefix usage – the .net magazine article that broke the story, based on a leaked email and catching me unawares as I was heading out for the airport



  • Browser Wars II by Faruk Ateş



  • Andy Clark’s There I said It and my correction



  • On Opera’s Implementation of WebKit Aliases by Peter Gasston



  • Why O, why? by David Kaneda. This is more balanced than I expected, as the author works for a only-works-in-webkit-woo! mobile framework/ library thing, although one of his 3 pieces of practical advice is to detect WebKit browsers and block them from Opera’s demos, thereby opening the Web by closing the Web, and helping users by hurting users



  • On vendor prefixes and WODs by Ian Devlin



  • The most thoughtful of all the posts I’ve seen so far is Is the Opera lady singing for Vendor Prefixes? by Kevinjohn Gallagher



  • and the one that neatly sums up my personal ambivalence, and then acceptance of our move:

    Opera, -webkit-, and the purpose of browsers: “The secret to reaching “Acceptance” is to simply ask yourself, “What are web browsers for? What is their absolute primary purpose? The answer: A web browser’s primary function is to display web content.”


  • My favourite commentary has been Daniel Davis‘ interview with Dr Stanley Dards, wise old man of the web:


    Mobile




    HTML, CSS




    Spot the difference!


    An exciting competition for readers. Can you spot the difference between these two articles?
    Two years ago, Dean Hachamovitch, General Manager of Internet Explorer wrote:

    Today, intellectual property rights for H.264 are broadly available through a well-defined program managed by MPEG LA. The rights to other codecs are often less clear, as has been described in the press. Of course, developers can rely on the H.264 codec and hardware acceleration support of the underlying operating system, like Windows 7, without paying any additional royalty.

    This week, the BBC reports Motorola wins Xbox and Windows 7 ban in Germany – also Windows 7 system software, Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player:

    It follows a ruling that Microsoft had infringed two patents necessary to offer H.264 video coding and playback.


    Opera


    For the sake of open-ness, here’s a link to Opera’s 2011 annual report (Giant PDF!).
    There is no truth in alleged “leaked emails” that our business plan reads 1) Publish photos of loads of multi-ethnic hipsters in glossy report 2) alias -webkit- prefixes 3) profit!

    ICT4PE&D

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