Gecko May Drop the Blink Tag 138
AmiMoJo writes "It looks like Mozilla are finally going to remove the much hated blink tag from the Gecko rendering engine that powers Firefox. Work to remove support for the tag, which was always non-standard and is not supported by the most popular HTML layout engines WebKit and Blink (Chrome, Safari, Opera, Android), is progressing and should show up in a future version of the browser." A comment attached to the discussion of this (not completed) move points out the odd possibility that Google's new Blink rendering engine may feature the blink tag via CSS animation, which would be "hilarious/awesome."
Will feature the hosts tag instead (Score:1)
So your hosts file troll will blinked to death!
no problem (Score:5, Informative)
HTML5 allows blink functionality to be done via CSS3 animations, so they can never take the away from us!
Re:no problem (Score:4, Insightful)
But It's appropriate for it to be in CSS, It's a style of display that has to syntax. I wish they'd remove bold and italic too.
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But It's appropriate for it to be in CSS, It's a style of display that has to syntax. I wish they'd remove bold and italic too.
They already have. They have replaced the bold with strong and italic with em as the replacements are also relevant to if the text is being read allowed by a screen reader too by changing the tone or inflection.
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I'm aware of that, and a time.will hopefully come when b and i are removed.
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Or perhaps I understand content and display separation.
b is a grotesque a tag as blink, both belong in CSS. They are about display, not content.
the tag to use for b is or span with a descriptive class, if you feel strong is not relevant to your context.
the place where this is more obvious is with the i tag, it can mean emphasis, quite, or a title.
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not grotesque at all, the appearance is often part of the intended content. In fine literature, there are examples of times the author uses italics or bold face or even a horizontal rule for a purpose; it is not for web designer dweebs following fashion of the moment to dictate or control that.
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It should be tagged by It's purpose, and then appearance described in CSS.
your argument could apply to blink.
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Someone uses blink still? I honestly don't see what the big deal is myself. Or is it just part of a crusade to remove all parts of the web that the designers personally dislike?
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I guess you haven’t looked at a mass market, popular book in a while. The GP is correct that bold and italics are dead. Put down your Tolkien (and his racist Eurocentric bias) and pick-up some more modern fiction like Meyer. You’ll learn just how out of touch you are if you really think bold and italic are needed for typesetting.
From the nearly one thousand hardbound books I own, including mass market Horror, Sci-Fi and Fantasy, to Textbooks, non-fiction the use of Bold and Italics is alive and well. The Chicago Manual of Style is also alive and well. I leave it to the author of any work to determine its best use for the context intended, and to expect ridicule for it's often misuse.
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I leave it to the author of any work to determine its best use for the context intended, and to expect ridicule for it's often misuse.
Speaking of expecting ridicule...
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Re:no problem (Marquee) (Score:4, Funny)
nested inside
. And I did it because the client's kid thought it was cool. I bet he's sorry to see it go, I know I am. ;-)
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Man, that brings me back... I remember back in the mid 90s putting small sprite animated gifs of running characters into marquee tags so it would look like one character was chasing the other in forum sigs...
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Oh god, those things you did to GeoCities and MySpace... you owe us all an apology!
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Tripod, mate, Tripod
And yes, I apologize.
Unreservedly.
But it was a long time ago. And besides, the bitch is dead.
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Marquee is also supported by WebKit and Blink.
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Marquee always baffled BE speakers. In the UK, a marquee is a big tent. The sideways-scrolling effect is known as a "marching display".
How is Blink the most popular? (Score:5, Insightful)
How is Blink one of the most popular HTML layout engines?
Is being used yet?
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It will auto update every user.
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And you're connected.....
I launch Chrome very infrequently (I just close the lid on my laptop, so it's still "running" for several days and/or weeks). Sometimes I launch Chrome even when I'm not connected to the Internet.......as a developer, I use a browser beyond just to browse the Internet....
So, I've actually been a couple of versions behind on Chrome (not on purpose, but it happens). It eventually corrects itself, but it's possible to be behind a few versions.
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Re:How is Blink the most popular? (Score:5, Funny)
How is Blink one of the most popular HTML layout engines?
I think what they meant is that people who have no concept of HTML layout have a tendency to overcompensate for this shortcoming by using the BLINK tag as a replacement for all other more-subtle and more-refined embellishments (B, I, U, P, BR, etc.), and they use it with such gusto that use of the tag indicates a subscription to the Blink "School" of layout theory ("more blink equals more better" and so forth) which is treated as a layout engine unto itself, however crude it may be. Many adherents of the Blink School evolved to the Flash school during the AOLic period, but as Blink is so much simpler to implement, it serves as a common denominator and suggests that these simplest developers outnumber all other developers combined. This makes their "layout engine" the most popular, in much the same way that people who do not know how to drive set the popular rules of the road through their ignorance of the actual rules simply by outnumbering everyone else.
I feel there has been a great disturbance in the Blink School, as though millions of dancing animated hamsters suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly stationary but not silenced.
Blink doesn't support blink? (Score:5, Funny)
How ironic.
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IE7 hid menus by default 2 years before Chrome existed. You just mean Firefox started playing "me too!" after Chrome did it.
The title bar, specifically (Score:2)
hide the menu bar and overlap the title bar with tabs
IE7 hid menus by default 2 years before Chrome existed.
But did either IE or Firefox take advantage of the space in the title bar before Chrome came out? Chrome's innovation was not only no menu bar (which IE had already done, as you point out) but also no title bar.
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Decorations and client area on the same row (Score:2)
Under window managers like DWM
This window manager appears to be ported only to X11, not to the native window system of Windows or the native window system of Mac OS X. And even in an environment that uses X11, the proper way I can see for to overlap the "title bar" would be for the application to specify through a hint that a non-rectangular client area is preferred, and then the window manager would tell the application where the window manager is placing decorations, so that the application can place its controls in the part of the cl
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Schrödinger is not amused (Score:4, Funny)
Sample code for animating opacity (Score:4, Informative)
How are we supposed to now write Erwin Schrödinger's famous thought experiment in only one line now?
Another user mentioned CSS3 animations [slashdot.org], and there exists sample CSS3 code for animating opacity [john-smith.me].
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I don't know the Schrödinger one liner. But I have kept this link in my Favorites / Weirdly Cunning bookmark bin for about two decades now, as when it is appropriate, it is always very appropriate: The Schroedinger Cat Epic Poem [straightdope.com].
It would please me to see someone post the HTML code for the blinkin one line Schrödinger. It may also have a place in my Favorites / Weirdly Cunning bookmark bin.
And an additional request: if it be not too far Off Topic--- and I think it not be so--- a discussion by t
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Here you go: not exactly the HTML, but that would actually not kill the cat:
http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20030427
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Use CSS (Score:4, Informative)
Since CSS 1 and still in CSS 2.1, blink has been a recognized value of the text-decoration property. For accessibility, browsers should blink slowly so as not to trigger epilepsy events in susceptible individuals.
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This. How can people not know this has existed since forever as a CSS property?
It is madness I tell you.
No wonder the web tech is sitting in the 1500s, nobody knows what the hell the features are.
Might as well post this and destroy the sites speed further, a very useful thing in CSS that gets rid of the need for ID Abuse.
http://css-tricks.com/how-nth-child-works/
Actually, I won't link it since the site is slow as hell already, only the worthy will copy and paste or bother to right click and go.
Good luck,
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I knew about this when I was still building websites and that was something like... ten years ago. Jesus.
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Mostly because it has became as big of a mess as Perl Regular Expressions. HTML is well on it's way to becoming line noise.
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Those of us who have done web tech since the 1990s know full well that knowing the CSS properties has had damn little value.
Until fairly recently, what had value was knowing which of the CSS standards actually worked in the real world. Which meant keeping an eye on the blighted Microsoft browser versions, and waiting until the ones that were not standards compliant dropped below the level of significance for a web site's intended audience.
For the most part, now we can all use the standard CSS and those we
Re:Use CSS (Score:4, Informative)
It is an optional part of CSS, and not supported by WebKit or Blink.
Geocities (Score:5, Funny)
In the blink of an eye all that old Geocities goodness will be wiped away from the eyes of the unsuspecting.
Re:Geocities (Score:4, Funny)
In the blink of an eye all that old Geocities goodness will be wiped away from the eyes of the unsuspecting.
How? They're not adding a <tasteful> tag.
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Sadly, no, outside the wayback machine. There were some good reference sites there that were really fast (since no one else still used them).
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I might have instead gone and shot up my school or something. Which would you prefer?
Or you could have done both, as some of the recent gun-totin' mad killah geeks have done. Remember the Asian dude who killed 30+ at virgina tech?
They are changing the tag - not dropping it (Score:1)
Since Blink will add the blink tab, Gecko will change the blink tab to a gecko tab.
So, "the end of days" ? (Score:5, Informative)
In older versions when typing "about:mozilla" we can read:
"And the beast shall come forth surrounded by a roiling cloud of vengeance. The house of the unbelievers shall be razed and they shall be scorched to the earth. Their tags shall blink until the end of days."
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Mod parent up! Actually true [wikipedia.org].
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Agreed.
I like the new verse:
The twins of Mammon quarrelled. Their warring plunged the world into a new darkness, and the beast
abhorred the darkness. So it began to move swiftly, and grew more powerful, and went forth and multiplied.
And the beasts brought fire and light to the darkness.
from The Book of Mozilla, 15:1
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Ok, I did not know about the the Book of Ice (about:Iceweasel in Debian Iceweasel):
And thus the beast grew powerful, and fire and thunder swept the land. But Mammon stirred in their hearts, and the beast Foundered, and its Corpse arose, and commanded "thou shalt not fly in my name." And the blazes shall freeze cold, and the souls of the followers of Mammon shall learn to tremble in the face of ice as they did before the fire.
from The Book of Ice, 10:13
ahahahaha!
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Yeah, I am running Aurora branch. Couple more releases and it should show up.
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There is a difference between knowing and remembering. Especially remembering the first version of it.
And my comment was due to the fact that the original comment was at -1 and I had no mod points.
It's a sad day... (Score:2)
It's a sad day for web developer all around the world.
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Let's not go all emo here. We've work to do.
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Only those without souls call it work. We all know that what the customer wants will make us cry ourselves to sleep every night....
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell [theoatmeal.com]
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It's a sad day for web developer all around the world.
I had to blink away the tears.
CSS already supports it. (Score:3)
Fiddle is here http://jsfiddle.net/Danack/3pFUS/ [jsfiddle.net]
@-webkit-keyframes blink { .blink {
from { opacity: 1.0; }
to { opacity: 0.0; }
0% { opacity: 1.0; }
50% { opacity: 0.0; }
100% { opacity: 1.0; }
}
-webkit-animation-name: blink;
-webkit-animation-iteration-count: infinite;
-webkit-animation-timing-function: steps(1);
-webkit-animation-duration: 1s;
}
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Re:CSS already supports it. (Score:4, Interesting)
Well this might - be really I'm not sure I _want_ this to work. http://jsfiddle.net/Danack/3pFUS/6/ [jsfiddle.net]
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It looks like the web has gone from high school to new professional [infiltec.com] and skipped college.
Ruh roh. (Score:1)
Hope it doesn't make my engshaming picture of Lou Montulli, the inventory, less valuable! :) http://engshaming.tumblr.com/image/30050495135
about:config browser.blink_allowed (Score:1)
You've been able to disable the blink tag for ages anyway.
How about rapid Gif's? (Score:1)
Gif's that animate in less than a second are the modern blink tag and just as bloody annoying. I'm looking at you Gawker properties with your obsession with Gif's that animate in less than and are /very/ distracting. It's the same bloody problem in a different bloody package, and it's pretty bloody annoying. Thankfully I can block them when I see them with ad block plus...
Netscape Navigator Legacy? (Score:1)
Is this just a tribute or leftover from Firefox's previous life as Netscape Navigator? It seems they were the first browser to include blink.
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And North Korea Prepared to Drop Nukes On South (Score:1)
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Isn't this going to break MySpace? (Score:2)
I suppose I should be happy they aren't removing support for rendering tasteless backgrounds and crappy fonts... My ugly MySpace page is safe. For now.
Misplaced hate (Score:2)
It looks like Mozilla are finally going to remove the much hated blink tag
I do not hate the blink tag. I hate the web developers.
Otherwise, I think the blink tag spurred the whole generation of web developers. Just look at all the so-called "Web 2.0" crap. Whether it is <blink> or jQuery's animations for every however tiny P.O.S., the end result is the same: unusable mess.
I admit to using text-decoration: blink; (Score:4, Insightful)
In one web application a form has to be completed within 10 minutes. I have a bit of javascript that puts a message the top of the screen when there are 90 seconds to go, and then makes it blink when there are only 30 seconds left. I don't pretend that it is pretty, but it can bring the user back to a task that they got part way through before being distracted.
Just because something can be used to create monstrosities does not mean that it should be banned. If that were the case, then ban .jpg on the grounds of what used to be found at goatse.cx
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I have a bit of javascript that puts a message the top of the screen when there are 90 seconds to go, and then makes it blink when there are only 30 seconds left.
Why not use a countdown timer? I would argue this is more useful to someone who has to submit a form within a certain timeframe. The real-world equivalent of blink in this situation is someone standing next to you yelling, "Hurry up! Hurry up! Hurry up!"
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Why not use a countdown timer?
There is a countdown timer, discrete in a corner somewhere. It gets bigger + more words and in a red font at 90 seconds, flashes at 30. The users say that it is useful. If they don't allow javascript it just tells them the time by which they have to be done.
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In one web application a form has to be completed within 10 minutes. I have a bit of javascript that puts a message the top of the screen when there are 90 seconds to go, and then makes it blink when there are only 30 seconds left. I don't pretend that it is pretty, but it can bring the user back to a task that they got part way through before being distracted.
Just because something can be used to create monstrosities does not mean that it should be banned. If that were the case, then ban .jpg on the grounds of what used to be found at goatse.cx
I'll have to agree 100%. Yours seems like an entirely reasonable usage case for the blink tag. I would hope they'd keep it in the rendering engine and we can just leave pages that abuse the feature, as we do for so many other abused features.
I have a page that simulates a Bash terminal [maow.net] in which the client watches as commands are typed into a Bash terminal and the results are fetched via AJAX.
The cursor blinks slowly, just as it would in a real terminal.
It was a PITA to get characters "typed" slowly with s
Removal of the blink tag will harm my workflow (Score:2)
The Doctor is a Gecko developer now? (Score:3)
<blink></blink> and you're dead.
(I am so, so sorry)
work is progressing? (Score:2)
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that probably means gecko is just as much spaghetti code as the netscape code base they discarded back in the days for being too complicated to work on.
The experiment is finally complete (Score:1)
Blink as CSS (Score:2)
for example:
blink: true;
color: white;
background-color: black;
}
or set the color of blink as a list
div {
blink: orange, green, blue
}
or not only you set the list, but you give them transition proportion (blink speed, larger number = longer stay in that color)
div {
blink: orange, 1, green 2, blue: 1
}
or
blink: url(image1), 10, url(image2), 20
This is where you use images to bli
BLINK tag essential to National Security (Score:1)
Secret plans for incursion epinova alien energy device for thought control hidden in cosmic background static of FM broadcast, later in vertical blanking interval of analog television broadcast. Digital realm unaffected until development of Mosaic when secret browser code inserted to extend all color palettes +1 past base two boundaries to create an subvisible 'hyngry hyppo' color (the 17th, 257th, 65537th and 16777217th palette index) whose boundary is perceivable by the subconscious mind. Diagrams and sim
No blink in Blink? (Score:2)
So the Blink engine has no blink support?
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Yeah, but I sleep at the shallow end