Unfortunately time to post regularly has been hard to come by recently as I’m working flat out on the next version of this website. Also plans are afoot for a of a series of posts centered around a single subject, this will come as soon as a find a spare couple of hours to write it.
For this post I want to state my views on the growing hype around CSS3.
Firstly CSS3 looks awesome, and will very likely change the way sites look and how they are built. It’s a pity that we still have such a long wait till we get to play with it. At the moment the specifications are still being worked on, so until they are finished we don’t know exactly what we’re getting, but even when these are released we have more time to wait.
Even when a specification is published we must wait for the browsers to start supporting it, or at least their interpretations of it. When we do finally have a browser that allows us to play with the new toys we will still be waiting another couple of years as the browsers circulate through the general population. Unfortunately we as developers have little control over what browsers the audience will use and thus we must design to fit the greatest share of the audience possible.
CSS3 will provide a new world full of possibilities, but not for a long while yet. In the mean time we have to use the tools we have and try and find new and innovative ways of using them.
2 Comments
Unfortunately waiting is something that I have come to get used to with regards to new standards emerging in the web world.
Even when they are released, as you mentioned, it can take years before they are supported by web browsers. Then the degree to which they support them can be debated.
Whilst the CSS3 spec holds great premise at the moment, I feel that by the time it is finally released, most of the features will be available by JavaScript.
Scott Mallinson | www.scottmallinson.co.uk 29th April 2008 @ 6:58 pm
Your perfectly right with the Javascript option, already the likes of JQuery make the various new selectors such as nth-child possible by automatically inserting the classes into the HTML.
However relying on Javascript alone can be dangerous, although personally I think the number of users without Javascript is low we still seem to be told not to rely on it solely. Maybe by the time CSS3 is released this may no longer be an issue.
Kean 30th April 2008 @ 8:50 am