Intent to Correct A Miscapitalization: referrerpolicy IDL attribute

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Emily Stark

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Jul 15, 2016, 4:30:25 PM7/15/16
to Jochen Eisinger, Mike West, blink-dev
In M52 we shipped the `referrerpolicy` attribute with a miscapitalization in the IDL attribute: it should be referrerPolicy, rather than referrerpolicy. The former is what the spec says (e.g. https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/semantics.html#the-a-element) and also what Firefox now implements.

In an attempt to avoid yet another HTTP-referrer-related misspelling from haunting the web forever, I'd like to correct the miscapitalization of the IDL attribute and will request the fix to be merged back (hopefully all the way to 52).

Please let me know if you have any objections!

Thanks,
Emily

PhistucK

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Jul 15, 2016, 4:40:45 PM7/15/16
to Emily Stark, Jochen Eisinger, Mike West, blink-dev
Is Firefox on board?


PhistucK

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Emily Stark

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Jul 15, 2016, 4:44:25 PM7/15/16
to PhistucK, Emily Stark, Jochen Eisinger, Mike West, blink-dev


On Fri, Jul 15, 2016 at 1:40 PM, PhistucK <phis...@gmail.com> wrote:
Is Firefox on board?

They either never had the miscapitalization or capitalized it correctly from the beginning. (Still trying to figure out what exactly happened, because at some point I'm pretty sure the web-platform-tests spelled it incorrectly but passed in both FF and Chrome.) But anyway, right now, Firefox spells it referrerPolicy, which is what I want to change it to.

Emily Stark

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Jul 15, 2016, 4:44:54 PM7/15/16
to Emily Stark, Franziskus Kiefer, PhistucK, Jochen Eisinger, Mike West, blink-dev
+fkiefer from Mozilla

PhistucK

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Jul 15, 2016, 4:48:09 PM7/15/16
to Emily Stark, Jochen Eisinger, Mike West, blink-dev
I asked because that was not clear from your original post - "The former is what the spec says (e.g. https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/semantics.html#the-a-element) and also what Firefox now implements." where "The former" is "referrerpolicy".


PhistucK

Emily Stark

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Jul 15, 2016, 4:52:20 PM7/15/16
to PhistucK, Emily Stark, Jochen Eisinger, Mike West, blink-dev
I see, sorry for the confusion. Yes, "referrerPolicy" is what Firefox does and what the spec says, "referrerpolicy" is what Chrome currently does.

Emily Stark

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Jul 15, 2016, 5:01:08 PM7/15/16
to Emily Stark, PhistucK, Jochen Eisinger, Mike West, blink-dev
Actually, apparently the attribute shipped in M51; the chromestatus entry was wrong. (I just updated it.) That means the misspelling has already hit stable. If that makes a difference, another option might be to support both spellings for a release or two while measuring usage of the misspelling and remove it later.

Jochen Eisinger

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Jul 16, 2016, 6:01:42 AM7/16/16
to Emily Stark, PhistucK, Mike West, blink-dev

I'd say just fix the spelling and merge it back, so we're shipping the same spelling as FF

Franziskus Kiefer

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Jul 16, 2016, 6:56:11 AM7/16/16
to Emily Stark, PhistucK, Jochen Eisinger, Mike West, blink-dev
Firefox never shipped with referrerpolicy. We renamed referrer to referrerPolicy in 45. (Unfortunately we turn on the attribute by default only in 50, which will be released Nov 8.)

Cheers

Philip Jägenstedt

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Jul 17, 2016, 9:42:16 PM7/17/16
to Franziskus Kiefer, Emily Stark, PhistucK, Jochen Eisinger, Mike West, blink-dev
The conservative thing would be to add referrerPolicy and deprecate referrerpolicy with a message saying it will be gone in M55, then remove after the next branch point and consider reverting only if M54 stable numbers from the use counter (a side effect of deprecation) look concerning.

Mike West

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Jul 18, 2016, 3:24:11 AM7/18/16
to Philip Jägenstedt, Franziskus Kiefer, Emily Stark, PhistucK, Jochen Eisinger, blink-dev
Given the fact that we just launched this, and it's not yet supported in any other browser, I imagine usage is tiny and malleable. If we can get the spelling change merged back to 52, then I don't think there's much reason to deprecate and continue support for the non-capitalized version. I agree that that's the conservative approach, but I suspect the usage doesn't justify it. I'd suggest just making the change.

I am, of course, guessing, since we don't have any usage data, but I'd be pretty surprised if things were otherwise.

-mike

Philip Jägenstedt

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Jul 18, 2016, 4:02:07 PM7/18/16
to Mike West, Franziskus Kiefer, Emily Stark, PhistucK, Jochen Eisinger, blink-dev
Yeah, if you can get it merged to M52 then that seems OK as well.

Jochen Eisinger

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Jul 19, 2016, 7:18:40 AM7/19/16
to Philip Jägenstedt, Mike West, Franziskus Kiefer, Emily Stark, PhistucK, blink-dev
ok, let's try to go down that route.
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