‘Crazy’ Firefox and Opera CSS blasted

Mobile platform strategist Peter-Paul Koch has lashed out at Firefox and Opera, due to the browser vendors’ implementations of the CSS device-pixel-ratio media query. As noted on the W3 CSS WG Blog, the query was ‘invented’ by WebKit rather than using the standardised 'resolution', and largely through the success of iOS devices, it’s become a common inclusion in many web pages.

However, Mozilla and Opera have used alternative syntax, as in the following example, which Koch presented on his post:

-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 1.5min-moz-device-pixel-ratio: 1.5-o-min-device-pixel-ratio: 3/2

Koch said this makes it far more difficult to write scripts to go through all the vendor prefixes. Previously, he has been a stern advocate of diverse platforms. In February, Koch argued developers focus on the iPhone too much, which was causing at least the perception of a WebKit browser monoculture, if not an actual one.

In Opera and Firefox not mirroring WebKit's lead in this particular slice of CSS, which follows the former company’s decision to use a small number of WebKit prefixes in its browser, Koch has seemingly been driven over the edge: “ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! I used to care a lot about diversity on the browser market, but I find myself slipping from that point of view. It’s just a fucking impossible system to maintain with fucking morons in charge of making up browser-specific CSS syntax.”

A Mozilla spokesperson dismissed the issue and told .net: "It's a mistake to read too much into vendor-prefixed rules. We remove prefixes from properties aggressively as soon as we're comfortable with their implementation, and this property is one that we intend to unprefix soon."

Opera had not returned .net’s request for comment at the time of publication.