Ask HN: Is it safe to drop CSS vendor prefixes?

7 points·kjannis··8 comments

Should we be dropping CSS vendor prefixes? Or should we keep them a little bit longer in our CSS, to support older devices? I'm thinking of iOS 6, Android devices and browsers that don't update automatically.

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This may sound awful, but I'm actually thinking of implementing them in the framework you're running (or the application "firewall"? Think a firewall/proxy that adds vendor prefixes based on your user agent. You write your CSS without them. Are there products that use this? How does it affect performance? I'm on an iPad right now so I don't really feel like Googling.

I know connect-assetmanager for node/connect supports this.. not sure if it cares about the user agent though, i think it just automatically includes all known vendor prefixes for your css rules.

Doesn't seem to be any harm in keeping them for the moment? There's still a lot of people on older browsers (Safari, Firefox, MS) who need those prefixes and seeing as the browsers support the features I think it'd make sense to keep them.

You could use Prefixfree.js to provide support for older "modern" browsers:

http://leaverou.github.io/prefixfree/

I just taught a workshop in a big digital agency, and on 2/8 Macs Chrome didn't work without the -webkit prefix.

Just shows how often people update.

Don't drop them.

Wow. That means that people aren't even bothering to close their browsers any more. Can't imagine what their memory usage is like.

http://caniuse.com is your best answer. Simply search the variant of the prefixed and see their support.

start using preprocessor or what, emmet and you won't at least have to write them right? they aren't causing issues in overhead

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