Last month Microsoft announced that they now support (via their IE10 release preview) CSS3 Animations, Transforms and Transitions without the need for vendor prefixes, becoming the first browser to do so.



What? I hear you cry. When did Microsoft begin leading the field in terms of CSS3 support? Were the Mayan’s right? Is this the end of the world as we know it?

Well, it seems Microsoft may have jumped the gun on this one, if the minutes of the CSS working group’s recent teleconference are anything to go by. Rather than waiting for permission from the working group before introducing unprefixed support for the CSS3 Animations, Transforms and Transitions specifications, as would normally be the case, Microsoft appear to have first added support, and then informed the working group after the fact.

Whether or not you approve of Microsoft’s actions, it does appear to have spurred the working group into action, as later the same day they resolved to allow all browser vendors to support CSS3 Animations, Transforms and Transitions without vendor prefixes.

Although the Animations, Transforms and Transitions specifications are still all at the working draft stage of development, and the working group doesn’t normally recommend unprefixing until a specification reaches the candidate recommendation stage of development, on this occasion they appear to feel that the specifications are now at a stable enough stage of development that the various properties can be unprefixed without causing any major headaches.

At the time of writing, Mozilla have indicated that Firefox will support Animations, Transforms and Transitions without prefixes from version 16.0 onwards, currently Firefox offers support with the -moz- prefix.