I came across this excellent article listing advanced CSS techniques in Smashing Magazine. One thing that struck me was how CSS3 is moving into javascript territory, particularly in regards to animation (Pure CSS Slideshow).
A lot of these experiments have the wow factor & little else (Webkit clock or CSS3_Depth_of_Field ). Others solve one problem only to create another ( Toggle box is not semantic or accessible or @Font-Face which has copyright issues ) but some are techniques I would love to use now but browser constraints (mainly IE) don't allow, for example:
CSS3 Spining IconsShapes of CSS
Fading Captions with Pure CSS
Rotating Blocks
CSS Zoom
These articles both excite & frustrate web designers. I'm excited with the power of CSS3 but frustrated that current browser limitations prevent me from using them right now. Microsofts Internet Explorer is the main culprit as their browsers have little or no support for CSS3 features. Even the recently released IE9 falls way behind other browsers (see here).
Even with the popularity of Internet Explorer declining full CSS3 support is years away as Internet Explorer is still used by about 45% of web users in Ireland. Even though IE9 is a great leap for Microsoft towards web standards, we're probably waiting for IE10 & the decline of IE7(9%) & IE8(33%).
This will be a slow process, for example IE6 is still used by 2.7% of Irish web users & it took almost 5 years to reach that figure.
There are a few js scripts that will help like Modernizr & CSS3 Pie but they are clunky at best & involve writing a lot of extra code.
For now, we'll just have to make do with CSS2 & the few basic CSS3 features that will slowly percolate through the next few versions of IE.
Conor Darcy
Web Designer, MOR Solutions
0 comments:
Post a Comment