Remove font-family -webkit-standard

Category: CSS
Type: Feature removal
Status: Removed (Chrome 99)
Intent stage: Removed

Summary

Remove support for the font-family value "-webkit-standard". This essentially behaves as an alias to the proprietary keyword "-webkit-body" and is only exposed as historical implementation details inherited from WebKit.

Motivation

The "-webkit-standard" name is used internally to describe a default font family that can be configured via a user preference. It's implicitly used internally (e.g. for initial or fallback font) or explicitly by authors via the proprietary name "-webkit-body". However because of how this is implemented, authors can also just specify "-webkit-standard" and obtain similar web-exposed behavior. Removing special behavior for these proprietary value will improve alignment with the CSS specifications and Firefox.

Standards & signals

Specification: https://drafts.csswg.org/css-fonts-4/#font-family-prop
Firefox: Shipped/Shipping — Firefox does not support this -webkit prefixed value.
Safari: Neutral — As a general rule, Apple is against removing features if that can break things on the web or their platform. Myles C. Maxfield commented that he is aware of the issue and don't think it's something desirable that these values are web-exposed.
Web developers: No signals — It's not clear whether developers are actually aware of this behavior but it was used by a few pages (see compat analysis).

View on chromestatus.com