Rethink on vendor prefixes

We've previously reported on CSS vendor prefixes, including the W3C CSS Working Group's initial suggestion browsers could start supporting other vendors' prefixes and then Opera confirming that it would alias a number of WebKit prefixes within its own rendering engine. However, minutes from the latest CSS WG meeting have pushed things the other way for CSS Transforms, Transitions and Animations.

In the minutes, there was rapid consensus on the decision to enable these things to be unprefixed going forwards. Google's Tab Atkins said he was "morally approving of the move", and Opera software engineer Florian Rivoal argued it was "painful that they're prefixed," adding: "now [the] cat is out of [the] box, yes". Mozilla developer David Baron followed up with: "I think we should unprefix as well. Would also like to see the specs move forward."

The decision was hastened somewhat by Microsoft's recent announcement that IE10 would add support for "non-vendor prefixed versions of standards that have reached Candidate Recommendation (CR) status since the Windows 8 Consumer Preview or should reach CR in 2012". In the CSS WG meeting, there were concerns about IE matching the spec, but it was noted there's still time to fix things in IE10 should the need arise.