
Blink tag removed from Firefox - nvr219
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/23.0/releasenotes
======
mcav
All snark aside, I wonder what the rationale was for doing this. It'd be a
shame to load a website in a browser 20 years from now, only to see the site
render incorrectly due to no-longer-implemented tags. Next, <center>?

It's tough, obviously, because we can't have cruft build up all over. But this
seems like a fairly straightforward case that a browser could shim out in
JavaScript by default. Blink is a pretty straightforward piece of internet
history. It's not like <applet>, which, while also a piece of history,
actually carries legitimate complexity/security risks.

~~~
mcpherrinm
Gecko was, afaik, the last major browser engine that supported <blink>. Chrome
and IE don't, at least. Opera won't, after switching to, ironically enough,
the engine called Blink.

So it's not exactly the same as removing <center>: Other browsers already
didn't support it.

~~~
jacobr
Oddly enough Chrome/Blink still has the String.prototype.blink method to
create a blink tag from a string. If I recall correctly it's actually part of
an ES (not DOM) standard.

~~~
Bockit
Wow. Because this surprised me so much, I just found out that if you open up a
node REPL and type 'hello'.blink() you get '<blink>Hello</blink>' returned. So
I guess it's an ES thing and it boggles my mind.

I was trying to find the ES standard where it's specified but I'll settle for
this[1] instead. Interestingly enough you have quite a few HTML wrapping
functions as part of the spec.

[1]:
[http://javascript.spec.whatwg.org/#string.prototype.blink](http://javascript.spec.whatwg.org/#string.prototype.blink)

~~~
Achshar
What could possibly be the use of that.

~~~
nnnnni

        <p style="color: red">
        <script>
            var str="&bull;";
            document.write(str.blink());
        </script>
        </p>
    

That would make a blinking red dot. It'd be good for status lights, I guess.

------
Natsu
This one might be a bit more important....

"Enable JavaScript" preference checkbox has been removed and user-set values
will be reset to the default

~~~
Kequc
The people that disable javascript either do it by accident and then stop
using the browser or are nerdy enough to figure out how to turn off javascript
in the configs. Javascript will also be configurable using plugins.

~~~
Natsu
Yeah, they're trying to remove the settings that people set to goof up their
browsers from the look of this. There's this one, too:

"Load images automatically" and Always show the tab bar" checkboxes removed
from preferences and reset to defaults

~~~
panhandlr
Let this day go down in history as the day we declared our independence from
the tyrannical Mozilla organization and their corporate-interest driven and
oppressive removal of our freedoms and ability to customize our browser. We
shall not be stricken down by their restrictive and non-representational
releases of firefox... instead we choose to be empowered by the option to
disable things such as javascript, and tabbed browsing because we understand
these options to be self-evident truths for all browser users.

I am tired of having my freedoms stripped from my browser without any
representation into the process. As a user of the browser I was not adequately
informed of the upcoming changes nor was I given an opportunity to choose not
to upgrade.

THIS MUST END

Contact me for further information, the revolution begins today.

~~~
zobzu
there's bugs for each of these (which are open to the world and anyone can
comment) all you have to do is to take a stance during the process. harder to
do so after a bunch of various people (employed or not by mozilla) decided
something.

pretty sure those options went off because enough people decided that the
preferences/option panel was too complicated and these were the ones that
telemetry indicated were the least used.

~~~
caf
I would not be at all surprised if there was a high correlation between
"People who turned off Javascript" and "People who declined to provide
telemetry", so there could be some selection bias in those results.

~~~
ishansharma
People who understand what that setting did can still disable by going to
about:config!

This is not a conspiracy, just making browser hard to break for people who
check boxes and forget about these. For those, browser is broken!

Those who know what disabling JavaScript actually does still have a way to
disable! Where does all the privacy talk come in between?

~~~
Natsu
NoScript is a much better option all around. I know I've been using it since
forever.

When I got my last company laptop without all these things set, I was
surprised how painful it was to try and download anything without a proper
adblocker and noscript. I don't know how people do it.

------
adregan
What a fitting farewell. If you check the source, the item is wrapped in the
old blink tag.

`<blink>Dropped blink effect from text-decoration: blink; and completely
removed <blink> element </blink>`

Start up firefox and give it a nice sendoff.

------
pamelafox
Aww, man. I love using <blink> (in FF) and <marquee> (in Chrome) when giving
presentations, they're such crowd pleasers. At least Chrome still has
<marquee>, I used it in a talk just 2 days ago. Hope they don't follow FF's
lead.

~~~
derefr
Both of these effects can be recreated quite easily using CSS3 animations, by
the way.

~~~
lukifer
Plug: I wrote a JS lib that can be used to create a CSS3 <marquee> (please use
sparingly):
[http://lukifer.github.com/HoverForMore.js](http://lukifer.github.com/HoverForMore.js)

~~~
brymaster
This creates some really nasty glitching when you hover over the text that
scrolls in Safari 6.0.5

~~~
lukifer
So it does. Strangely, the small example is unaffected. Thanks, I'll look into
it.

------
drewying
Fare well old <blink> friend. My high school memories of webrings would not be
the same without you.

------
kristopher
Quite fitting that the <blink> tag originated with the Netscape browser[1] and
now is removed in its descendant Firefox.

The idea was first discussed at a bar in Mountain View, CA.

[1]
[http://www.montulli.org/theoriginofthe%3Cblink%3Etag](http://www.montulli.org/theoriginofthe%3Cblink%3Etag)

------
smrtinsert
It was as if millions of geocities sites suddenly cried out in terror and were
suddenly silenced.

------
markrages
| Their tags shall blink until the end of days.

from The Book of Mozilla, 12:10

------
yawniek
how about organizing a campaign to hire some protesters in front of mozillas
office to bring it back?

( [http://www.vice.com/read/its-now-possible-to-hire-fake-
prote...](http://www.vice.com/read/its-now-possible-to-hire-fake-
protesters?utm_source=vicefbus) )

------
chiph
What's neocities.org going to use now?

~~~
notatoad
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13955163/imitating-a-
blin...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13955163/imitating-a-blink-tag-
with-css3-animations)

------
Luyt
I found BLINK and MARQUEE so infuriating irritant that I used to binary patch
them out in the browser executable. This was before the era of signed
executables.

------
morkbot
Also worth noting: "New feature in toolbox: Network Monitor".

The lack of it was the last thing that was keeping me using Firebug.

------
darrelld
I wonder what abused tags today we will have a moment of silence for 10 years
from now?

~~~
krapp
<table>...</table>

~~~
thejosh
How else would you display data?

~~~
krapp
You're right, everything else I can think of is worse for data, tables are
pretty good for that (minus the weird vertical centering thing that sometimes
happens in cells.)

But seeing tables being used for layout annoys me far more than the blink tag.

~~~
jallmann
> But seeing tables being used for layout annoys me far more than the blink
> tag.

How come? CSS positioning is pretty unintuitive, and sometimes it's just
easier to get something working with tables. If the end results look fine,
what's the problem? Table-based layouts aren't in-your-face like the blink tag
was.

Oh, and don't view-source on HN ;)

~~~
krapp
My problems are mostly how easy it is to get lost if you're dealing with
nested tables within tables (especially inside templates), and that they have
to be completely read before rendering... although that may no longer
necessarily be an issue with modern browsers.

I find divs and spans easier myself but I guess, yeah, at the end of the day
if it looks fine and it loads fine then it's fine. Too much pain from hand-
coding too many tables has made me twitchy and curmudgeonly.

 _Oh, and don 't view-source on HN ;)_

Oh, i'm aware... It's just too bad html doesn't provide elements that handle
nested lists. If only. Ah well.

~~~
dyml
Isn't <ol> <li> <ol> <///> Valid?

~~~
krapp
Yes, i was being sarcastic.

------
mcpoulet
I love the fact that in the release notes page, they used a <blink> tag around
the message "Dropped blink effect from text-decoration: blink; and completely
removed <blink> element".

------
lrem
Don't worry, we still have the Web 2.1 version:

[http://cheese.blartwendo.com/web21-demo.html](http://cheese.blartwendo.com/web21-demo.html)

;)

------
cranklin
Mozilla didn't want to be responsible for causing seizures

------
adamnemecek
Thanks god for the upcoming support of custom html tags.

------
mattwritescode
Well, geocities will never look the same again.

------
sirwitti
Damn, I seriously thought about posting this :)

------
floor_
RIP

