Intent to Correct A Miscapitalization: referrerpolicy IDL attribute

[Emily Stark]

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]

Is Firefox on board?

☆PhistucK

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[Emily Stark]

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]

+fkiefer from Mozilla

[PhistucK]

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]

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]

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]

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

[Franziskus Kiefer]

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]

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]

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]

Yeah, if you can get it merged to M52 then that seems OK as well.

[Jochen Eisinger]

ok, let's try to go down that route.