[webkit-dev] webkitPostMessage

[Maciej Stachowiak]

On Apr 29, 2012, at 6:56 PM, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs at apple.com> wrote:

> 
> I think the relevant question is how much (if any) content uses webkitPostMessage (without unprefixed postMessage fallback). The fact that postMessage incorporates the new functionality doesn't answer that question. I'm willing to believe almost no one uses it, but I don't have any evidence for this proposition. The proposed deprecation process reasonably asks for some kind of evidence. I don't think "delete and see what breaks" is a good way to gather the relevant info, either in this case, or in general. I am sure there are low-cost ways to gather some concrete information about usage.
> 

So, after thinking about it, perhaps this thread just indicates that the deprecation policy is not ready for prime time when it comes to prefixes. For now, maybe it makes sense to just apply a standard of "if no one objects".

In the longer term, here's a few things we should think about:

- Historically, we've almost never removed prefixed versions of features that get promoted to unprefixed. The marginal maintenance cost is low and there's usually some nonzero compat benefit. We have not usually considered benefit to the Web platform as a whole to be a major deciding factor. Should we change this assumption, and start removing prefixed versions of features more aggressively?

- Does prefixing work well for JavaScript APIs (as opposed to CSS properties)? For whatever reason it seems more disruptive. What should be our approach to adding prefixed JS APIs, and at what point should we promote them to unprefixed?

Regards,
Maciej