I fixed blink in Mozilla <i>twice</i> (<a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=89065" rel="nofollow">https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=89065</a>) 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.<p>Anyways, a sad day.
You can put jwz's blink in your browser profile's userContent.css to make it work on all websites:<p><pre><code> @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;
}
</code></pre>
(Though it will work a little differently than the native <blink>, as the CSS makes non-text elements blink as well.)
Thing is, back in the day, blink <i>did</i> have its uses...<p><pre><code> <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>
</code></pre>
Even corporate intranets loved it: <a href="http://forums.asp.net/post/433145.aspx" rel="nofollow">http://forums.asp.net/post/433145.aspx</a><p>It worked!
Mandatory link:<p>"The Origins of the <Blink> Tag"
<a href="http://www.montulli.org/theoriginofthe%3Cblink%3Etag" rel="nofollow">http://www.montulli.org/theoriginofthe%3Cblink%3Etag</a><p>It's surprisingly interesting and written by the person with the original idea!
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.
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.<p>from The Book of Mozilla, 12:10
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.
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:
<a href="http://www.jwz.org/blog/2012/06/i-have-ported-xscreensaver-to-the-iphone/" rel="nofollow">http://www.jwz.org/blog/2012/06/i-have-ported-xscreensaver-t...</a><p>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.<p>(if you're wondering whether I'm joking or not: yes I am, except for the 100x perf drop)
Now, the only "valid use of the blink tag"[1] will work again.<p>[1] <a href="http://blink.tylian.net/" rel="nofollow">http://blink.tylian.net/</a>
Discussion from yesterday:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6170392" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6170392</a>
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.<p><blink>The new iphone is rumoured to...</blink>
<blink>Version 0.1.2 of xyzscript has just been released...</blink>
My favorite use of <BLINK> <a href="http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix-haters/login.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix-haters/login.html</a>
I don't care what you say, there is no rhyme or reason for browsers to keep dropping <blink> support while <i>all</i> of them continue to support <marquee> (though it's probably just a matter of time?)
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.
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.
My work around that operates more like the original (i.e. does not cause img's to flash), built with AngularJS - <a href="https://github.com/RobK/angular-blink" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/RobK/angular-blink</a>
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.
And the obligatory t-shirt to express my feelings about this <a href="http://www.cafepress.com/hackernewsswag/10307694" rel="nofollow">http://www.cafepress.com/hackernewsswag/10307694</a>
<a href="https://github.com/samgranger/blink.js" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/samgranger/blink.js</a><p>User agent check still needs to be removed and replaced with something better
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?