
Some killjoys have removed the blink tag from Firefox - mfincham
http://www.jwz.org/blog/2013/08/a-light-has-gone-out-on-the-web/
======
tingley
I fixed blink in Mozilla _twice_
([https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=89065](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=89065))
in the old days, back when I was running around looking for things to fix. The
first time it broke was a result of Dave Hyatt's rewrite of the style system;
I always suspected he had broken it on purpose. The second time seemed like it
was just a mistake.

Anyways, a sad day.

~~~
emhart
I'd actually love to hear more about your fixes, your suspicions and your
feelings about blink's removal. The anthropology of the internet is
fascinating to me and it sounds like you would have a pretty unique
perspective on this. Either here or a blog or whatever, I'd love to know more.

~~~
tingley
There's not a lot to say. I didn't have any huge role in the project, although
the experience working on it was hugely influential in the way I thought about
programming. Maybe I'll write it up some day.

As for Hyatt, it just seemed like something he would do as a joke. Blink was a
ridiculous feature, but it was a standard, which was a wedge that Mozilla
leaned on heavily in those days.

------
ivank
You can put jwz's blink in your browser profile's userContent.css to make it
work on all websites:

    
    
      @keyframes         blink {
        0% { opacity:1; } 75% { opacity:1; } 76% { opacity:0; } 100% { opacity:0; }}
    
      blink {
        text-decoration:   inherit;
        animation:         blink 0.75s ease-in infinite alternate;
      }
    

(Though it will work a little differently than the native <blink>, as the CSS
makes non-text elements blink as well.)

~~~
brudgers
The problem framed by JWZ is not a technical one. It is a social one, and
centered upon values. Eliminating <blink> changes the existing content of the
web. There's a reasonable argument that that is a bad thing - again one based
on values not technology.

To put it another way, <blink> has meaning by virtue of its history. Its
presence on a page says something to the viewer - not something technical but
something cultural.

<blink>'s removal does not make the web richer or more meaningful. Instead,
its removal does something quite the opposite.

I won't say that it is vandalism - but it does wantonly alter the expression
of existing web content, and does so to the very content that is most in
danger of being lost to history. It neuters what makes some web pages
representative of their time and place.

~~~
michielvoo
I think we shouldn't expect historic pages to work in modern browsers. As long
as we can reliably run older browsers we can also view historic pages as they
were once rendered.

~~~
lmm
What old browsers can we still run reliably? Serious question.

~~~
icebraining
Any. That's what VMs are for.

~~~
TheZenPsycho
So johnny six pack who made a web site for his crochet club back in 1997 using
microsoft front page is going to fire up a VM and install an old browser to
look at it? uh huh.

~~~
icebraining
Yes, much like I can never visit a faraway country because I can't pilot a
plane.

~~~
TheZenPsycho
So I need to have the level of skill needed to pilot a plane just to look at
my old family photos, drawings and poetry? And you make products with the
expectation from your customers, perhaps?

"Trust me with your data, I am a technologist. It's okay, I'll take care of
it. Though I will expect you to fire up a VM if you still care about it 10
years from now."

------
Terretta
Thing is, back in the day, blink _did_ have its uses...

    
    
        <blink><font color="red">"If you click continue, 
        your database will be irretrievably deleted, your 
        children shipped off to coal mines, and your tea 
        served lukewarm."</font></blink>
    

Even corporate intranets loved it:
[http://forums.asp.net/post/433145.aspx](http://forums.asp.net/post/433145.aspx)

It worked!

~~~
bradgessler
Fear not! I brought blink back at
[http://terribleideas.neocities.org/](http://terribleideas.neocities.org/)
(and a bunch of other really terrible tags, like <shudder/>).

~~~
AlexanderDhoore
Great stuff! I love a good satire. It's amazing what you can do with css there
days. Especially <sparkle> is impressive. I also love that you used neocities.
Who doesn't miss the 90s, right?

~~~
ehsanu1
<sparkle> is implemented with just an animated gif background. Still, great
stuff!

------
hobbes78
Mandatory link:

"The Origins of the <Blink> Tag"
[http://www.montulli.org/theoriginofthe%3Cblink%3Etag](http://www.montulli.org/theoriginofthe%3Cblink%3Etag)

It's surprisingly interesting and written by the person with the original
idea!

~~~
speeder
Drunk coders, awesome. Also I wonder who leaked, or found out, the tag first.

------
mindcrime
Killjoys? Nay, bloody sodding wankers, the lot of them! Removing the <blink>
tag is about as heart-warming an event as taking Old Yeller out back and
putting a bullet through his brain. This is a travesty, pure and simple.

~~~
brudgers
_" as heart-warming an event as taking Old Yeller out back and putting a
bullet through his brain."_

Minus the rabies.

~~~
jfb
No, I think it's about right.

------
nhebb
Blink is a visual annoyance, but it's nothing compared to the retina bleaching
caused by jwz's site.

~~~
IvyMike
Once upon a time, green-on-black was the best thing available, and to
programmers my and jwz's age, it was THE FUTURE.

But to this generation, it's denigrated as "retina bleach".

~~~
mpyne
Everyone knows amber-on-black was the only acceptable terminal configuration.
:)

~~~
mixmastamyk
Said to be most ergonomic. The warm color has since been found to be more
pleasing in the evening.

After I gave up on compiz (negative plugin) due to bugs, I made a night-time
stylesheet that converts white pages to orange on almost black, on a hotkey.
Using it now to save my eyes from blinding light.

~~~
induscreep
try using f.lux, a program that changes your monitor's white temp. depending
on the time of day.

[http://justgetflux.com/](http://justgetflux.com/)

~~~
mixmastamyk
I do use that on Windows. But I find white pages intolerable at night and so
it is not enough to change them to off white.

------
rangibaby
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.

from The Book of Mozilla, 12:10

------
voltagex_
The best use of this I've seen was someone wrapping the entire Wikipedia
article on the blink tag, in the blink tag.

------
frozenport
Does anybody have the firefox devs discussion on this matter. Blink was my
favorite indigo child of tags. When clients wanted more attention to a div i
would blink it, and they would quickly realize the error of their ways.

~~~
jmadsen
Really? Mine always thought it looked great

------
exDM69
Not sure if he's joking or not. In other circumstances I would immediately
take it as a joking but this guy has been seriously complaining about removing
crappy features that should have been killed decades ago:
[http://www.jwz.org/blog/2012/06/i-have-ported-
xscreensaver-t...](http://www.jwz.org/blog/2012/06/i-have-ported-xscreensaver-
to-the-iphone/)

In the above he was complaining about the removal of glBegin/glEnd from OpenGL
ES (and depracating it in OpenGL 3.0+). It was a convenience feature that
might have made sense back in 1992 when OpenGL was introduced but with the
advent of consumer graphics hardware in the late 90's, glBegin/glEnd was
essentially the reason for a 100x performance drop.

(if you're wondering whether I'm joking or not: yes I am, except for the 100x
perf drop)

------
yareally
Now, the only "valid use of the blink tag"[1] will work again.

[1] [http://blink.tylian.net/](http://blink.tylian.net/)

------
planckscnst
Someone collapsed the waveform!
[http://www.schrodingerscatis.com/](http://www.schrodingerscatis.com/)

------
skeletonjelly
Discussion from yesterday:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6170392](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6170392)

~~~
brudgers
The author of the article is JWZ:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jwz](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jwz)

And there's a history:

[https://groups.google.com/forum/?_escaped_fragment_=msg/comp...](https://groups.google.com/forum/?_escaped_fragment_=msg/comp.infosystems.www.servers.misc/IB7h_NwnEyo/00ry61QmDGIJ#!msg/comp.infosystems.www.servers.misc/IB7h_NwnEyo/00ry61QmDGIJ)

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=213625](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=213625)

~~~
skeletonjelly
Thanks! I didn't see anything about that on his site. That makes it a tad more
personal

------
thezilch
WHAT'S NEXT?!?? REMOVING...

    
    
      <font face="comic sans ms">???</font>
    

???

~~~
ygra
Which has been standardised for ages, but deprecated for a while.

------
shirro
Now we need a new semantic tag to indicate content will be annoying that we
can style with css however we like. I propose we reuse the blink tag for that
purpose.

<blink>The new iphone is rumoured to...</blink> <blink>Version 0.1.2 of
xyzscript has just been released...</blink>

------
brudgers
This isn't progress.

It's just change.

Blink never hurt anyone.

~~~
pjscott
Have you forgotten how annoying the web used to be?

~~~
brudgers
The original form of my comment was:

    
    
      (...)
    
      (...)
    
      (But for the sake of ideology.)
    
      (...)
    

As demonstrated by the argument that blink deserves elimination because of the
past, the big rationale is punishment - premised upon _anthropomorphizing an
HTML tag._

What I remember about the days of blink is fucking amazing the web was. The
driving ideal was connecting everything to everything else - not creating
gated communities of cul-de-sacs. What was far more annoying than blink was
auto-playing music.

Now in fairness, if the web has ceased to be a source of annoyance since, I
must not have noticed. Was there a memo?

------
fnordfnordfnord
My favorite use of <BLINK> [http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix-
haters/login.html](http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix-haters/login.html)

~~~
mjy78
I guess safari has already removed support for this tag? I get no blinking
cursor on this page :o(

~~~
bskap
Blink was a non-standard tag added to Netscape. Presto supported it because
Opera tried to support everything. Trident and KHTML/WebKit/Blink never
supported it.

~~~
iopq
Blink doesn't support blink?

------
wymy
> <blink> support should be dropped for one release out of every four.

Thanks for the laugh.

------
kudu
I think that completely killing the blink tag is a bit extreme given that its
core implementation could simply have been replaced by a CSS polyfill.

------
msvan
So now the blink tag will appear in some browsers but not in others? Fear not,
the blink tag lives on. If not in Firefox, then in the irony.

~~~
gpvos
Firefox was the last browser that still supported it.

------
joshuahedlund
I don't care what you say, there is no rhyme or reason for browsers to keep
dropping <blink> support while _all_ of them continue to support <marquee>
(though it's probably just a matter of time?)

------
antihero
So I for science I tried applying "shudder linear 0.1s 0s infinite" to the
<body> tag. It may be because I'm hungover but I came very close to throwing
up.

------
chromaton
I always thought that <blink> should be implemented by alternating between a
high and low intensity color. That way it's not invisible 30% of the time when
you're reading it. I suspect if it had been done this way, it would have been
seen as far less offensive.

------
david927
If you have a problem and you think that the blink tag is the solution, now
you have two problems.

------
Natsu
Someone needs to hold a funeral for it. One of those funerals where people
throw a party.

------
RobK_
My work around that operates more like the original (i.e. does not cause img's
to flash), built with AngularJS - [https://github.com/RobK/angular-
blink](https://github.com/RobK/angular-blink)

------
lnanek2
Makes sense there would be a MILSPEC for blinking but avoiding seizures. If
you have an LCD that can only show blank or numbers, the only visual way it
has to warn you about something, like a number being too high, is to blink.

------
aspinei
And the obligatory t-shirt to express my feelings about this
[http://www.cafepress.com/hackernewsswag/10307694](http://www.cafepress.com/hackernewsswag/10307694)

------
dutchbrit
[https://github.com/samgranger/blink.js](https://github.com/samgranger/blink.js)

User agent check still needs to be removed and replaced with something better

------
taude
I'd honestly take blinking text over overt Flash ads any day...

------
wil421
What about the view counter on my Geocity site? I would look at it everyday to
see if someone happened to stumble on my site.

------
andr
Put this in your CSS:

    
    
       blink {
         animation: fade-in-out 1s steps(1,end) infinite alternate;
        }

------
dsschnau
I don't get it - can't we just implement the same effect in JS if we need
blink that badly?

------
aj700
since "the killjoys" (actually quite accurate in this case) AT WIKIPEDIA won't
let me put the words 'LUDICROUS SPEED' in blink tags or capitals on the
Spaceballs article, what's the point in having it anyway?

------
orestmayski
Don't see how the blink tag would be much use though..

------
teeja
pfft. Javascript timers are more accurate anyway. Nyah nyah Mozilla.

------
sigzero
Thank goodness!

------
derleth
Epileptics don't need to use the Web anyway. /s

~~~
positr0n
I learned something interesting from a comment on the post:

"I was a neuro tech for a long time, doing tests for epilepsy. A 1Hz blink can
trigger a seizure, but only in a vanishingly small number of epileptics and
only if it's sustained - photosensitive epileptics (far from all epileptics)
usually need at least 8-10Hz strobing before epileptic activity rises. The
common range is ~12-16.

All this being said, have a 3:1 duty cycle is better UX anyway - the blink off
works as the attention-grabbing highlight, and the longer duration on allows
what's highlighted to be more easily read."

Looks like you don't need to worry :-D

~~~
derleth
The fact it's possible at all means it's not worth it.

~~~
derleth
> The fact it's possible at all means it's not worth it.

So having a feature which is widely agreed to be impossible to use tastefully
_is_ worth possible headaches and seizures in some people?

------
workbench
One less reason to use Firefox

------
pyrocat
Someone give them a fucking medal.

~~~
bencollier49
Why? Did they just win a f--king contest? I didn't know they ran those, it
ought to be an Olympic sport, eh?

