Comments (0)

By giizii, February 24, 2009 9:51 am

As designer, looking at the possibilities offered by Webkit at the moment (text-stroke for example) is kicking a flash-back in to DTP days when Quark revolutionized the page layout and graphic design. I have the same feeling it is happening again with Webkit offering great CSS 3 support.

CSS 3 is still not fully defined and not all specifications passed the working draft stage at W3C, but the approach to accept and implement what is currently in recommendation by the industry consortium, and implement the standards as they are committing, to me is a right way to do it. Why waiting few years to benefit from the good stuff when we can have it now step by step?

But, as it has been back in the days, be prepared to consume lots of kitsch as well. Another drawback is the dilemma:

• Do I (and my clients) want all solutions to visually look same in all browsers for all users?
• Is there a particular strong reason to put design before functionality?

I say no, functionality comes first, and design follows. In cases I need to compromise, I will not go to total look and feel solution, but for the most accessible and optimized code and void JavaScript to achieve presentation.

Comments (3)

By giizii, February 16, 2009 9:35 am

I have no intention to elaborate in this post what new CSS 3 brings to your life, but simply again to point out how one thing is stopping us to enjoy the benefits of it.

I rant all the time about IE, simply because it’s making my professional life a misery. And again, there is new version, IE8 and CSS3 will not be supported. This guys suck big time. Sadly, most of the average population uses IE simply because is pre-installed on their PCs. Nothing wrong being pre-installed (same for Safari on OS X or FF on Linux), quite contrary, I like when everyone can use the Internet and get benefit from it, but if IE follows standards and new developments on the web, the users will benefit more, and Microsoft as business too. How can they be so blind?

• How long we will have to use nested div elements with only purpose to have rounded corners on the page?
• How long some of this rounded corners solutions will use JavaScript to achieve layouts? This is plain wrong and nowhere near the web we want to have – semantic, accessible and portable.
• It’s not only about rounded corners property (border-radius). For example the attribute E[attr='val'] selector is not supported and it is in the CSS 2.1 specification for ages!
• Native SVG? Why do we have the CANVAS element in HTML5?

Bah! I will still spend 30% of my time writing meaningless code just to achieve layouts. Users are most important and I won’t let them down, but this is getting ridiculous.