Intent to Ship: Remove non-standard appearance keywords

[Di Zhang]

Contact emails

dizh...@chromium.org

Explainer

None

Specification

https://drafts.csswg.org/css-ui-4/#appearance-switching

Summary

Since only standard appearance keywords should be supported, we are removing the appearance (and -webkit-appearance) keywords that shouldn't be supported anymore: * inner-spin-button * media-slider * media-sliderthumb * media-volume-slider * media-volume-sliderthumb * push-button * searchfield-cancel-button * slider-horizontal * sliderthumb-horizontal * sliderthumb-vertical * square-button Note that value "slider-vertical" will not be removed as part of this patch it is used for allowing <input type=range> vertical. It will be removed once feature FormControlsVerticalWritingModeSupport is enabled in stable. Previously, if using any of the above keywords, a console warning will be shown, but the keyword will be recognized as a valid value. With the feature enabled, there will be no console warning. The appearance property will be ignored and set to the empty string. The use count (under WebFeature::kCSSValueAppearanceNonStandard) is at 0.005985% as of July 2023 [3]. [1] https://drafts.csswg.org/css-ui-4/#appearance-switching [2] https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues/8506#issuecomment-1515062326 [3] https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vTP-wXiSV9_dSbbs4OEH-XqP0hakmoTwmEBkEJ-EAI3vDmlXxWMdHvCYl01QqUHm7q6iw8ubK0d3xk1/pub

Blink component

Blink>CSS

TAG review

None

TAG review status

Not applicable

Risks

Interoperability and Compatibility

This feature only affects the reflection in computed style. Currently, while it is possible to set an appearance value with one of these non-standard values, it will not affect the appearance of that element. Now, if appearance is set to one of these non-standard values, the returned computed appearance value will be auto. It is unlikely websites depend on this information: this deprecation should be web compatible.

Gecko: Shipped/Shipping

WebKit: No signal

Web developers: No signals

Other signals:

Ergonomics

There are no other platform APIS this will be used in tandem with and this will not make it hard for chrome to maintain good performance.

Activation

There should be no challenge for developers to take advantage of this feature immediately.

Security

N/A

WebView application risks

Does this intent deprecate or change behavior of existing APIs, such that it has potentially high risk for Android WebView-based applications?

None

Debuggability

The non-standard appearance values we are removing are already not listed in the autocomplete in DevTools.

Will this feature be supported on all six Blink platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, Chrome OS, Android, and Android WebView)?

Yes

Is this feature fully tested by web-platform-tests?

Yes

Flag name on chrome://flags

RemoveNonStandardAppearanceValue

Finch feature name

Non-finch justification

None

Requires code in //chrome?

False

Tracking bug

https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=924486

Estimated milestones

Shipping on desktop	117
DevTrial on desktop	115

Shipping on Android	117
DevTrial on Android	115

Shipping on WebView

117

Anticipated spec changes

Open questions about a feature may be a source of future web compat or interop issues. Please list open issues (e.g. links to known github issues in the project for the feature specification) whose resolution may introduce web compat/interop risk (e.g., changing to naming or structure of the API in a non-backward-compatible way).

None

Link to entry on the Chrome Platform Status

https://chromestatus.com/feature/5066630972833792

Links to previous Intent discussions

This intent message was generated by Chrome Platform Status.

[TAMURA, Kent]

Removing appearance keywords which have no painting code might have compatibility issues. We removed the keyword "caret" in the past, and it caused issues like crbug.com/944023.

The counter for this is https://chromestatus.com/metrics/feature/timeline/popularity/4416. The value is 0.005 - 0.02.

I recommend having a deprecation period before removal.

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TAMURA Kent
Software Engineer, Google

[Yoav Weiss]

tkent@ - can you expand on the compat risk? It's not immediately obvious to me what these apps were doing that resulted in a rendering difference.

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[TAMURA, Kent]

Valid appearance keywords have some side-effects even though they have no special painting.

 * Skip border painting

 * 'display' property value is changed to 'inline-block' or 'block'.  So some properties such as 'width' 'height' are not ignored.

<p>
<span style="border:2px solid red; height:3em; background:yellow; appearance:media-slider;">Valid</span>
<span style="border:2px solid red; height:3em; background:yellow; appearance:foobar;">Invalid</span>
</p>

[Yoav Weiss]

Thanks!! So IIUC, any usage will result in rendering changes? If that's indeed the case, I think it makes sense to try and drive usage down before changing behavior.. 

[Di Zhang]

Thanks for the feedback. The counter does feel high, I will follow the Deprecation steps [1] and extend the milestones (likely DevTrial 117 and Shipping 3 milestones later at 120).

[1] https://source.chromium.org/chromium/chromium/src/+/main:third_party/blink/renderer/core/frame/deprecation/README.md

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TAMURA Kent
Software Engineer, Google

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[Alex Russell]

Hey Di,

Thanks for taking compat seriously.

We chatted about this at API OWNERS this morning, and there'd broad support for the deprecation. There's also concern about the relatively short deprecation window, but maybe there are some ways we can build confidence? Some ideas that were contributed by Mike, Yoav, and Chris:

• Perhaps we can look to see which keywords in this proposal are unsupported in other engines? E.g., if it's not compatible to use it across Gecko, WebKit, and Blink today, perhaps it's easier to remove.
• A spot check of the big users of these values to understand if there are patterns. Perhaps there's a single library, or embedded script, that represents the bulk of use, which might lead us to some quick wins for driving down use (e.g., targeted outreach).
• DevRel might be able to help spread the word about deprecation.

In general, I think there's support for marking this as deprecated quickly, but it might be better if we agree to revisit the removal date based on evidence in the future. WDYT?

Best,

Alex

[Di Zhang]

Hi Alex,

It's great to have support on this deprecation. Since we feel a deprecation period of 117 to 120 is too short, I just removed the target milestone. It can be updated once we have better metric pulses.

For suggestion 1, the wpt test appearance-cssom-001.html actually list all of them.

For Chrome, we are failing the 11 listed on this feature as well as 1 slider-vertical (for both appearance and -webkit-appearance).

For Firefox, everything is passing: it only supports standard appearance values.

For Safari, it is failing for the newly added 3 push-button, slider-horizontal, square-button [1], 1 internal apple-pay-button, and the same 1 slider-vertical.

WebFeature::kCSSValueAppearanceNonStandard is currently tracking for all non-standard values, including slider-vertical. I could make them into 2 different WebFeatures as I suspect slider-vertical is high usage value (as it affects how <input type=range> gets rendered). Splitting it might decrease the usage percentage.

Suggestions 2 and 3 are great, I don't know how to best start on them.

[1] https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues/8506#issuecomment-1515062326 was resolved April 2023

Thanks,

Di

[Di Zhang]

Hi,

I had a talk with Chris and Mason, who helped me better understand the steps for 2-3. I will aggregate more metrics data and share them in a google doc here soon.

* What are the websites that uses these values most

* What elements are they using the CSS property on, are there rendering differences once disabled?

* Why are some of these value's counter higher than the aggregated WebFeature::kCSSValueAppearanceNonStandard

Thanks,

Di

[Daniel Bratell]

That sounds good! Considering that the number in the use counter is already so low, it should be enough to show that a majority of the users only use the value that will not be removed and I'd be happy to see this ship.

/Daniel

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[Di Zhang]

Thanks to the advice above, I have done some improvements to the deprecation warning and how/when it will get shown to the user.

After discussing with the DOM team, we have decided to split the feature into two parts. We will divide NonStandardAppearanceValues into two features:
NonStandardAppearanceValuesLowUsage: All keywords currently at usage < 0.001.

* media-slider at 0.000361

* media-sliderthumb at 0.000187

* media-volume-slider at 0.000143

* media-volume-sliderthumb at 0.000109

* sliderthumb-horizontal at 0.000182

* sliderthumb-vertical at 0.000014

These will get removed as part of 118 and go through a slow rollout release through Finch (before enabling in stable)

NonStandardAppearanceValuesHighUsage: All keywords currently at usage >= 0.001.

* inner-spin-button at 0.0256

* searchfield-cancel-button at 0.058

* slider-horizontal at 0.008

* push-button at 0.217

* square-button at 0.0027

These will need a few milestones to show deprecation issue and should be re-evaluated (maybe around M120). We might find ways to reduce the numbers by targeting some CSS import or popular sites.

Please let me know if this plan sounds good and I will update the chromestatus description accordingly.

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[Alex Russell]

Thanks for being flexible here!

LGTM1 to deprecate the first set of keywords (below < 0.001% use). Thanks for coming back to us about the second set.

Best,

Alex

[Daniel Bratell]

LGTM2

/Daniel

[TAMURA, Kent]

LGTM3.

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TAMURA Kent
Software Engineer, Google

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TAMURA Kent
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[Di Zhang]

2024 Q1 update:

The new deprecation warnings has been in stable for multiple milestones: 118 (October 2023) to 121 (January 2024).

The high usage appearance values are still getting used at similar rate.

NonStandardAppearanceValuesHighUsage: (September 2023 -> January 2024 numbers)

* inner-spin-button at 0.0256 -> 0.024

* searchfield-cancel-button at 0.058 -> 0.050

* slider-horizontal at 0.008 -> 0.010

* push-button at 0.217 -> 0.202

* square-button at 0.0027 -> 0.0032

However, looking at the highest usage URLs, they seem to be using a generic website building template. For example, many sites are using the same CSS file where the `-webkit-appearance: push-button` is set on a reset submit button. But that button isn't found in the rendered site. Maybe we need a few more UX clicks to get to that button, but even then, I estimate the appearance change wouldn't be breaking.

Another data point: We have had a mismatched enum to appearance value id bug that reached stable (crbug.com/1495418). This caused many high usage values to be mapped wrongly for a month. Only one bug with one star was filled. This could be an indication that deprecating these >= 0.001 % of page loads CSS appearance values will not break websites.

My plan is to start a Finch experiment slowly in M122 and monitor reported bugs. If all goes well, we can officially disable/deprecate these higher usage values in M124.

Please let me know if you have reservations about this approach. Thanks.

LGTM3.

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[Rafael Gawenda]

A warning is being shown in the DevTools console about this, pointing to code that is only using %c (style) in console.log wo alter a simple colour:

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[Di Zhang]

Hi Rafael,

Thanks for noticing this. I have also seen the warning sometime highlighting the wrong line of code, but the CSS property keyword and value are being used somewhere else in the page. Is that the case for your webpage? If you have a reproducible HTML, I can debug further or forward it to the team maintaining how console log messages are shown.

Best,

Di

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[Rafael Gawenda]

Hi

I did a full code search for push-button and it's not on our site, but I noticed that it doesn't appear always, just about 25% of initial page (it's a SPA) loads. Also something that I think I remember seeing one of the imes I look into this is that we've some external code injected from our push provider CDN (oneSignal).

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[Di Zhang]

I have created a bug issue to track this:

https://issues.chromium.org/issues/327915071

Let's move the conversation there, thanks.

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