Do You Remember Browser Vendor Prefixes?

Typically, these are prefix syntaxes that need to be added before certain experimental and non-standard CSS, such as: -webkit-, -moz-, -o-, -ms-. These prefixes are meant to allow developers to implement new CSS features in situations where the browser has not yet officially supported them. At that time, it was also common to use preprocessors like PostCSS with the autoprefixer plugin to preprocess CSS and add these prefixes, so that the website syntax could adapt to a wider range of users.

As for why browser prefixes have gradually disappeared?

The reason is that the prefixes used for testing have deviated from their original purpose — functional experimentation. With the increasing number of prefixes, things became more chaotic. Browser vendors gradually recognized that an excess of experimental prefixes could lead developers to rely on non-standardized features, which in turn affects the compatibility of websites across different browsers. Therefore, modern browsers are more cautious about introducing experimental features, ensuring that new features have sufficient completeness and cross-browser consistency before introduction, and gradually moving away from using browser vendor prefixes to test new features. Instead, they provide manual toggles within the browser or offer test versions of browsers for experimental purposes, such as Chrome Canary or Firefox Nightly.