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In many if not most cases, the -webkit-* properties WebKit-specific web sites are using do have -moz-*, -ms-*, -o-* equivalents. Gradients, Transforms, Transitions, Animations, border-radius, all interoperable enough to be browser-agnostic. Their web authors need only a few minutes to make the site compatible with Mozilla, Microsoft or Opera. But they never did it.

Without your help, without a strong reaction, this can lead to one thing only and we’re dangerously not far from there: other browsers will start supporting/implementing themselves the -webkit-* prefix, turning one single implementation into a new world-wide standard. It will turn a market share into a de facto standard, a single implementation into a world-wide monopoly. Again. It will kill our standardization process. That’s not a question of if, that’s a question of when.

Let me be very clear: this is NOT hypothetical and I’m not discussing here something that could happen. All browser vendors let us officially know it WILL happen, and rather sooner than later because they have, I quote, “no other option”. Let me also state very clearly that is NOT a lack of innovation on these browser vendors’ side, in particular when they DO support a feature but with their own prefix, following here the Working Group’s rules.

THIS MUST NOT HAPPEN.

Call for action: the open web needs you *now*.


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