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75 Comments
- carbonetc, on 06/15/2009, -0/+30"So why is it that, when it comes to CSS, we’re stuck in the past and so afraid of experimenting?"
As usual, the answer is IE6. - andrewjffox, on 06/15/2009, -3/+26Great article for anyone wanting to understand how they can practically start using CSS3 in their designs now.
- kierucom, on 06/15/2009, -3/+23Sorry Smashing - while I enjoy what CSS3 has to offer and eagerly await it becoming a standard I'm not going to buy into the whole "We have the power as designers" thing when the existing CSS is hardly itself a standard yet, and 'outdated' browsers still make up a decent majority of browser use.
And I don't buy that showing off CSS3 to clients will make them any more eager to ignore their outdated users... clients don't care that things are 'easier' to do; they care that things are done. - ronnyek, on 06/15/2009, -0/+18honest question, not trying to start a flamewar or anything... is this what we're to expect from css3 that each browser has its own specific selectors?
-webkit-column-count : 4;
-webkit-column-gap : 20px;
-moz-column-count : 4;
-moz-column-gap : 20px;
Kinds reminds me of the non-standard standards in j2ee stuff... I though the point of progress in css department was to make things browser unspecific. - StuartGibson, on 06/15/2009, -1/+17Good luck with that. CSS 2 is 11 years old and IE8 is the first MS browser to pass the CSS2 based Acid 2 test.
You should be good around 2020.
/weep - fragsta, on 06/15/2009, -2/+17I know they say websites don't have to look the same in every browser but it would make it a lot easier in many cases if they did. Just can't wait for widespread adoption of CSS3-compatible browsers.
- CobraClutch, on 06/15/2009, -0/+15Now the general public need to take their browsers to the next level...
- dainix, on 06/15/2009, -3/+14I was waiting for more such articles long time :) Finally excellent explained version!
- SniperZero, on 06/15/2009, -1/+11Now if only it could be more widespread and people used more web designer friendly browsers (Looks at IE 6 and 7).
- carbonetc, on 06/15/2009, -0/+9Browser vendors were (appropriately) hesitant to implement CSS3 declarations before CSS3 was finalized. If they implemented "border-radius" and when CSS3 was finalized the "border-radius" spec had changed, we'd all be stuck with some of the same inconsistencies between browsers that have driven us crazy for years already. The next version of the browser would do it right, but we'd have to wait for users to finally abandon the bad version before we could stop thinking about it.
But the vendors also didn't want to wait for CSS3 to be finalized before adding new features for people to play with. The browser vendors have to keep innovating to apply pressure to the standards people, or else standards would lag behind the browsers even worse than they already do.
So, for now, if you want to add a border radius you do something like this:
-moz-border-radius: 5px;
-webkit-border-radius: 5px;
border-radius: 5px;
Years from now the last line will override the other two, so it's future-proof as long as you're confident that the finalized CSS3 declaration will do what you expect it to.
Of course in most cases you can just update the site later if things change on you. - MrTea, on 06/15/2009, -0/+9why can't IE6 just die?
- Gudlyf, on 06/15/2009, -0/+9Unfortunately, you'll find that a huge percentage of visitors still use Trident-based (IE) browsers, so you *still* have to be careful rolling out advanced CSS functions that they won't support. So, in essence, why the hell bother when you have to tread so carefully? It's a big ol' pain in the ass to work around browser shortcomings just to use the fanciest new CSS functions. It's actually easier to stick with what's working now and wait until 2020, like StuartGibson said above.
Definitely some cool and handy CSS3 features, but when you think of some not working in IE, you have to just stare and dream. - kierucom, on 06/15/2009, -0/+7It's a great thought - but not one that has seen much practice. As I stated earlier, the current inception of CSS still has areas of very spotty support between different browsers; CSS3 is not going to be handled any more different - even if it ever becomes a 'standard'.
It's not just a matter of "Oh the developers want it so we should adapt". Were that the case we'd have had a more uniformly supported CSS years ago; and HTML5 would already be a widely accepted standard.
You are delusional if you think that developers hold quite so much sway. - althanis, on 06/15/2009, -0/+7I think that's the point whole point right there, until CSS3 becomes standardized, each browser-maker will implement things in their own way.
- markedOne, on 06/15/2009, -0/+7***** that thing, I'll try to support IE7, but 6 dead for me.
Well, at least as long as this descision is up to me and not up to my boss. - Proz, on 06/15/2009, -0/+5What about taking the standard to the next level? You know... make it at standard so we can see a full implementation in all the major browsers
- tehnico, on 06/15/2009, -0/+5I can't wait for the backlash against rounded boxes.
Soon only the cool sites will use squared corners. - kierucom, on 06/15/2009, -0/+5CSS3 is still in development; those -webkit and -moz tags are 'placeholders' so that developers have access to the new features. You can see similar things in existing CSS with the various 'opacity' hacks; a feature that never quite made it to being standard in the current version of CSS, but with luck will make it into CSS3.
- MattDanger, on 06/15/2009, -0/+4I bet if you titled the reformat control to say "Click and install to perform hard drive maintenance" you would get a >50% click rate.
- zantos420, on 06/15/2009, -0/+4title should read: "Take Your Design To The Next Level With CSS3 Unless You Still Have To Support IE6"
- carbonetc, on 06/15/2009, -0/+4The worst enablers of IE6 are probably the big companies that have strict guidelines about what software can be installed on the computers they equip their employees with. In many cases all the sites on their intranets have been designed for IE6 using Frontpage or some other proprietary horror because they hired dime-a-dozen developers with Microsoft certifications who had no clue what they were doing. And these companies are usually run by old fogies who are still figuring out email, so who's going to push for a company-wide overhaul?
Personally I'm with the people who've decided to just stop supporting IE6. We developers teach IE6 users that IE6 still works because we keep bending over backwards to hide IE6's epic levels of fail from them. I say we show them the true face of IE6. You want the internet to be usable, you have to upgrade. - KSUdesigner, on 06/15/2009, -0/+4Because these standards pave the way for future browsers. I'd rather have the standards developed before the browsers, instead of the browsers developed before the standards are set.
- rchargel, on 06/15/2009, -0/+4Two years ago I wrote an ActiveX script that automatically installs Firefox and sets it to the user's default browser. It was a joke, and I never actually put it into production. During the install a message was displayed saying something like:
"This website has detected a major flaw with your operating system. Installing a security patch to fix this issue."
That said, I also wrote an ActiveX control to reformat your 'C:' partition. Granted both of these required that the user allow the script to run. - lovek, on 06/15/2009, -0/+3Very nice article. Don't suppose someone has a link to something of equivalent quality for HTML5?
- primatage, on 06/15/2009, -1/+4wow this is comprehensive, and polished as always :)
- rm249, on 06/15/2009, -0/+3I currently use the border-radius property (as it's not that much of a drawback for non-supporting browsers, they just don't have that nice rounded effect). I can't wait until CSS3 is the standard so I can start taking full advantage of CSS3 without defining 2-3+ different attributes for browser-specific attributes and compromising the cross--browser compatibility of my web pages. Definitely look forward to fulling taking advantage of CSS3 once it becomes 100% standardized in all major browsers, until then I will only be using the border-radius and other non-structural essential CSS3 properties.
- Jektal, on 06/15/2009, -0/+3@rchargel, you mean "webkit has been fairly decent."
- positron, on 06/15/2009, -0/+3Developers say sites don't have to look the same in every browser. Designers would prefer they did but can be reasoned with. Clients? Not so much.
- stubear, on 06/15/2009, -0/+2Yep, that's pretty much the size of it. Funny how people are OK when Firefox, et al do this but when Microsoft did it to advance the web, back in the days if IE3 and 4, in ways the W3C was barely even looking into everyone cried foul. If Firefox, Safari, etc. gave two ***** about web standards they would work together to develop a consistent temporary placeholder so we don't have to write multiple rules in CSS to do the same damn thing.
- alsazen, on 06/15/2009, -0/+2agreed, explaining these differences to clients can be a nightmare at times - especially when they want to see all the bells and whistles themselves, but can't (or won't) use anything other than IE.
- kierucom, on 06/15/2009, -0/+21.) Cumbersome to write by hand
2.) Less predictable from platform to platform
If you really think these are true; I'd like to know what magically happy world you live in- because it certainly isn't the one most of us call reality. - splorpdotorg, on 06/15/2009, -0/+2@stubear
That might work... consider:
-proposed-border-radius: 5px;
border-radius: 5px;
As long as the browsers use the same functionality for the proposed CSS, it should be fine as long as they remove the function once the CSS is standardized. - rm249, on 06/15/2009, -1/+3Because people are too stupid to upgrade? FFS it's 2 versions old now, web developers shouldn't have to worry about browsers that damn old. I understand that some companies might have web applications that only work with IE6... which brings up the question - how old are these web applications? Why haven't they updated them?
/endrant - snagglefoof, on 06/15/2009, -0/+2Here's an example that shows why I want to be able to use variables in CSS:
I have a color I want to apply in different spots. I want my content and header sections to be red.
Instead of typing "background-color:red;" in two spots, I should be able to do "background-color:@variable" in those two spots, and then declare "@variable" to be constant that is assigned red.
Same would be able to be defined with margin widths, or padding. I don't want to change every "4px" into "8px" later. I want to change it in one spot.
I'm familiar with Java, so this is why I envision this. CSS needs variables. - splorpdotorg, on 06/15/2009, -0/+2I found a work-around someone had come up with a while back that renders properly in CSS2 and provides the border-radius appearance without using that element: http://www.cssplay.co.uk/boxes/snazzy2.html It's not pretty, but it appears properly in every browser I've tested, back to IE6 AND it validates.
- Jektal, on 06/15/2009, -0/+2CSS variables do not sound like a good idea to me. Do that logic in whatever is generating your HTML, and handle all outcomes from those variables in the CSS.
- rchargel, on 06/15/2009, -0/+2I agree about Microsoft's IE browsers (IE8 is the first CSS2.1 compliant browser from MS). But Safari has been fairly decent.
- carbonetc, on 06/15/2009, -0/+2Microsoft is still in the process of realizing that "standards" doesn't mean "whatever we hack together and force on the public, relying on our dominance rather than talent and foresight."
- 7aji, on 06/16/2009, -0/+1or triangle boxes??? ;)
- 7aji, on 06/16/2009, -0/+1TOTALLY AGREE!!
God I miss table layouts so much!
/s - rm249, on 06/15/2009, -0/+1Interesting. Thanks for sharing :D
- chug187, on 06/16/2009, -0/+1Why not just create a class?
- Jektal, on 06/15/2009, -0/+1Okay, that actually sounds fairly legit. I can't shake the feeling that there ought to be some way to inherit those styles, but I can't come up with any good example right now.
- 7aji, on 06/16/2009, -0/+1Actually I think the majority of IE users (people that don't really have that much experience with computers) think that you need to press the allow button when it pops up.
- MagickCrafter, on 06/19/2009, -0/+1Ah CSS3 I love you so much.
Oh wait...
***** YOU IE! - amadeusdemarzi, on 06/15/2009, -0/+1The RGBA section is a bit ambiguous and confusingly written.
"The difference between RGBA and opacity is that the former applies transparency only to a particular element, whereas the latter affects the element we target and all of its children."
What they MEANT to say, RGBA applies to the PROPERTY you assign it to, not the element. - 4ZERO1, on 06/15/2009, -0/+1Really a great article.
- N01SE, on 06/18/2009, -0/+1FYI, be wary when using non-standardized functionality in your websites. This along with HTML 5 is still only in draft, meaning implementation in browsers could possibly change, check the document status under each addition:
http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/current-work - snagglefoof, on 06/16/2009, -0/+1Because the point isn't that I want to apply a style to an element in the HTML. We can already do that with classes, I agree.
The point is that I want to use a common measurement or value in various classes or ids. -
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