Intent to ship: css multi-column properties (unprefixed)

[neerjap...@gmail.com]

As of today (Oct 7, 2016) we intend to turn on support for unprefixed css multi-column properties by default on all platforms. For now, we'll be continuing to support the prefixed versions as aliases, and we intend to remove these aliases in the near future (assuming web-compatibilty allows for this) here:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1308636

Normally we'd mention the preference that controls this feature, and an earlier -intent-to-implement posting -- but, this feature (css3 multi-column) was implemented a decade before we came up with our best practices around that, in this bug:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=251162

Bug to turn on (i.e. unprefix) by default:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1300895

Note that we do not yet support the "column-span" property -- that's covered here:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=616436

Link to standard:
https://drafts.csswg.org/css-multicol-1/

[Mike Taylor]

On 10/7/16 5:07 PM, neerjap...@gmail.com wrote:
> Note that we do not yet support the "column-span" property -- that's covered here:
> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=616436

So what's the plan for column-span, exactly?

We just got a report[1] that the CSSWG site[2] is busted (lol?) because
now we understand unprefixed multicol CSS but don't support column-span:
all.

I'm slightly concerned that other sites serving unprefixed multicol CSS
will assume column-span support (though admittedly I don't know the
history of multicol support, nor how common they co-occur).

[1] https://github.com/webcompat/web-bugs/issues/3429
[2] https://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/current-work

--
Mike Taylor
Web Compat, Mozilla

[jensi...@gmail.com]

I would recommend that we ship support for column-span before we unprefix column. Shipping only part of a specification like this is risky for interop and web compat. Let's get all of it working behind a prefix, and then unprefix it all at once.

(And fix the bugs asap. I've got a bug demo page at: http://labs.jensimmons.com/examples/multicolumn-3-bug-demo.html)

[L. David Baron]

On Wednesday 2016-10-12 22:41 -0700, jensi...@gmail.com wrote:
> I would recommend that we ship support for column-span before we unprefix column. Shipping only part of a specification like this is risky for interop and web compat. Let's get all of it working behind a prefix, and then unprefix it all at once.
>
> (And fix the bugs asap. I've got a bug demo page at: http://labs.jensimmons.com/examples/multicolumn-3-bug-demo.html)

I've never seen column-span as particularly integral to the set of
features in the spec. (The version in the early spec drafts was
unimplementable; it was removed in the 2005 working draft and then a
simpler version returned in 2007.)

It's also always felt to me like an additional feature on top of the
other column support (which we've been shipping with a prefix since
2005 or so; see bug 251162).

The use cases for column-span that I've seen have also felt like
workarounds for lack of proper section markup. If developers want a
column layout for their sections, they should specify that.

-David

> On Thursday, October 13, 2016 at 1:28:00 AM UTC-4, Mike Taylor wrote:
> > On 10/7/16 5:07 PM, neerjap...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > Note that we do not yet support the "column-span" property -- that's covered here:
> > > https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=616436
> >
> > So what's the plan for column-span, exactly?
> >
> > We just got a report[1] that the CSSWG site[2] is busted (lol?) because
> > now we understand unprefixed multicol CSS but don't support column-span:
> > all.
> >
> > I'm slightly concerned that other sites serving unprefixed multicol CSS
> > will assume column-span support (though admittedly I don't know the
> > history of multicol support, nor how common they co-occur).
> >
> > [1] https://github.com/webcompat/web-bugs/issues/3429
> > [2] https://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/current-work
> >
> > --
> > Mike Taylor
> > Web Compat, Mozilla

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--
𝄞 L. David Baron http://dbaron.org/ 𝄂
𝄢 Mozilla https://www.mozilla.org/ 𝄂
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
- Robert Frost, Mending Wall (1914)