Blogging And All That Malarkey

Fearful

Smashing Magazine published an excellent primer for CSS3 properties by Inayaili de Leon today which referenced a little of my work. I was pleased, but as today as gone on and I’ve watched the comments roll, my heart started to sink.

Great article, thanks but I think to wait that the most of browsers support CSS3 totally to develop websites for my clients.

I hope CSS3 will be a standard in the near future, right now you cant really use anything of it ’cause not every browser supports it.

CSS 3 rocks. Unfortunately we need to stay at least 5 more years with CSS 2.1 if we want to offer the same design to each user (what in most ‘commercial’ projects is necessarily).

I think till every browser is somewhat close to being the same (render wise), we’ll be stuck working to get the lowest common css version working.

I can’t wait to use CSS3 in a real project. Unfortunately I’m going to be stuck with things as they are for the time being as I wait for my clients to catch up. I expect this will be the case for most designers for the time being.

I’m actually a little surprised about how much hype there is around CSS3 at this point, considering it conflicts directly with W3C standards and validation. I wonder how long it will be until the majority of users are browsing the web with browsers that will support and validate CSS3.

I can’t wait to start using the new CSS3 standard, but I don’t think we can start just yet. Especially when IE isn’t supported in some of these.

CSS3 looks really good however because of IE it will be long time before I start using it.

Considering that half the population still uses IE6, I won’t be implementing CSS3 anytime soon.

This mostly just makes me sad because I can’t use 90% of these rules.

Has the last ten years all been for nothing?

I fear for this industry.

Leave your comment

Kyle Weems

June 16 2009 @ 08:08am #

Well, on the plus side, I just felt better about my place in the industry. While these guys are offering up the best sites 1995 had to offer, us crazy people with our devil-may-care attitudes towards cross-browser appearance will be getting all the the cool gigs.

Wait, can we call web design jobs “gigs”? If so, do we get roadies?

Ashley

June 16 2009 @ 08:11am #

Well, I guess I’ll be learning all I can about CSS3 presently so I can be up on these guys.

Matt Morse

June 16 2009 @ 08:13am #

Oh good God! Reading some of those comments I believe actually hurt my brain. Not only for the misunderstanding of the future of CSS3 but more due to the apalling use of English! What’s up - can’t read, write or do calculations? That’s ok - you can become a designer! ... I share your fear.

Chris Coyier

June 16 2009 @ 08:13am #

Nah, I’m not too worried about it. I really love Smashing Magazine, but they have grown to be so big that they get kind of the “Digg effect” going in their comments where the conversation is just unmanageably stupid. I’m sure most people reading through the post were delighted and happy to learn some new stuff and anxious to try it out.

Tim Van Damme

June 16 2009 @ 08:15am #

Most of those comments are like saying sex sucks, even though they never experienced it.

José Mota

June 16 2009 @ 08:17am #

I understand all these points perfectly. That’s why someone has got to face the bull and give the first step. As for me, I volunteer to be part of the frontline. It’ll be hard, but the stronger and better I will get.

Clients need to be aware of this, just like when Netscape was around. How old is IE 6, 8 years?? C’mon give me a break. Google was not afraid of it when it announced Wave and its HTML5 use. If a client shows up to me and says he wants IE 6 and 7 support, I simply charge more (a LOT more).

This is a matter of critical mass. Once it is reached, there’s no stopping. Europe won’t have IE bundled soon — let’s hope they keep that —, ain’t that good news? :D

Ryan Brunsvold

June 16 2009 @ 08:18am #

Perhaps these people have trouble remembering that no browser maker has ever willingly supported standards. It takes the entire community as well as some extremely talented and influential designers/developers at the top to force change in these companies.

Matt Barnes

June 16 2009 @ 08:23am #

The portion of your audience that can benefit from advanced CSS features is growing all the time. That, along with the fact that many of these features fail gracefully in less capable browsers, means there’s really no reason not to implement these features now.

rb3m

June 16 2009 @ 08:28am #

@Tim Van Damme #5 - I think is more like “Sex may be great, but until every woman wants to do it with me, I’ll just refrain”

Andy FOrd

June 16 2009 @ 08:29am #

Don’t worry, Andy. Chris Coyier put it more diplomatically, but Smashing Magazine comments are just a step above YouTube comments.

Paul Davis

June 16 2009 @ 08:30am #

I don’t think anything major will happen until about 80% of browsers support CSS3. That’s when I would be happy to build a clients site in entirely CSS3.

Alan Bristow

June 16 2009 @ 08:32am #

Right when I was thinking “Oh no! This web stuff is so well documented and we are now all so wonderfully open, now eVERYONe can do it…”, I read this ‘heartening’ list of comments that show me how far up the scale* I am (*the ‘FrontPage 97 installer’ to ‘web standards glitterati’ scale). So at least *I* feel better. Not bad for a Monday.

pepelsbey

June 16 2009 @ 08:45am #

We were simulators of CSS 3 for the last ten years.

Chris Wallace

June 16 2009 @ 08:47am #

@Tim Van Damme Have you been having sex with CSS3 again? I thought you were getting therapy for that.

Tim Van Damme

June 16 2009 @ 08:53am #

@Chris Wallace: No therapy can get me off CSS3, sorry…

Olly

June 16 2009 @ 08:53am #

People fear change. Change can be hard work. That’s why at least 20% of my users are still using Internet Explorer 6.

Don’t worry too much though Andy. Some of us use this imaginary futuristic CSS3 stuff all the time and we still manage to present a very similar experience to our IE users. They just miss out on some of the shiny stuff.

Dylan

June 16 2009 @ 09:26am #

*Cough* progressive enhancement?

dvessel

June 16 2009 @ 09:55am #

Nothing to be fearful of. They’ll eventually come around. For the ones that don’t, well good for them. I hope they put their time to good use, e.g., tricking IE6 into looking all fancy at the expense of everything else. :p

Oh, I’m doing that too at the moment but I plan on scaling back gradually. It’s not easy changing overnight and I think it’s the wrong time to expect everyone to hop on board so quickly. It’s not about fear. For many people, the progression of CSS3 and the proposed specs came pretty quick. We just need time to adjust and I think we are finally coming out of the dark age of web development.

Michael

June 16 2009 @ 10:16am #

I’m a bit late for the “first” comment but I can at least “me too” Dylan’s comment about progressive enhancement.

And with the releases of FF3.5, Opera 10, Safari 4, Chrome 2 and even IE8 I have a feeling CSS3 is going to be a welcome change that is not too far off.

Hambo

June 16 2009 @ 10:28am #

@Dylan I think those comments represent the budget designer/developers who criminally undercharge for their time and see CSS3 implementation as an extravagant expense.

For serious developers like us, progressive enhancement can be factored in and this will lead to the CSS3 sea change we all hope for.

Chris Lienert

June 16 2009 @ 10:55am #

Do you want to be a leader or a follower? The authors of those comments are clearly in the follower camp. By continually pushing our work forward, we’ll lead everyone else forward in our wake.

Scott

June 16 2009 @ 12:37pm #

Sadly many of these wonderful tools won’t be available to a large portion of the browsing public for quite some time. That’s not a big deal for things like radiused borders and box shadows, but I want to use the selector enhancements for mission-critical styling—for things that will make or break the experience of a site. These are tools that have been created specifically to address shortcomings that have existed and plagued designers since CSS came to be, and it bums me out that they’re so close and yet out of reach in a way. From that perspective, I can understand why some of the commenters seem so down on CSS3. It’s fine to leave out some of the more refined touches for older browsers, but the fact remains that in 2009 I still need extra markup or javascript to style a text input or the last element in a list.

Enrique Ramírez

June 16 2009 @ 02:05pm #

Fear is obvious. we’re in the middle of (yet another) change. Our industry is always evolving, sometimes at bigger scales just like this one. Soon we’ll divide: the “purists” that will stick with CSS 2.1 and that “every browser get the same” philosophy, and those that will start pushing the limits of the technology we have available. Who’s right? No one, really. It just depends on what works for who.

Reminds me of “HTML” purists vs XHTML visionaries… or Table vs CSS.

Be not afraid. Nothing has actually changed.

Michael Kozakewich

June 16 2009 @ 03:34pm #

I’m becoming more and more of a progressive-enhancement type. Why should everything look the same in all browsers?
I’m the type who resizes text and window several times for each refresh of the screen, just to see where everything settles. Just doing that, I’ve realized that people don’t usually deal with that; they’ll have it set to one specific size.

People will rarely visit a site in several different browsers and measure the pixel spacings.

Sam Hardacre

June 16 2009 @ 04:48pm #

It is disheartening to see people seemingly so resistant to adopting CSS3.

I’m not up on how browser vendors decide what to support, but surely if more designers and developers adopted CSS3, even as an enhancement, then the demand for browsers to support it would be greater. If the people who’ll be implementing CSS3 on their sites don’t support it (excluding the folks on this site) then why should they?

Right now I think we’re all just going to have to keep plugging away in the hope that these people see what can be done with CSS3 and start playing around with it themselves.

lensco

June 16 2009 @ 05:39pm #

Oh well, it’s their loss – sort of. We on the other hand have been gladly using CSS3 properties since 2-3 years on a website that gets millions of pageviews ... each day.

Elliot Jay Stocks

June 16 2009 @ 05:54pm #

Very sad indeed…

Kean

June 16 2009 @ 05:54pm #

So long as CSS3 is used in a way that it adheres to the ideals of progressive enhancement then theres no reason not to use it. Just don’t go over board and start using it all just because it’s there.

Olly

June 16 2009 @ 06:56pm #

I guess another option is that parts of the industry are suffering from depression. It’s hatred for shortcomings of certain browsers have become so ingrained that it can’t see a way out towards a better future.

Clinton Montague

June 16 2009 @ 08:10pm #

I’m just glad that I’m in the use CSS3 because it’s there, it’s supported, it’s awesome and IE doesn’t care if it doesn’t understand. I’m a huge fan of progressive enhancement, and one of my favourite sites, mostly for the use of CSS columns, has to be the tweetcc site, which in IE just renders as a single column. It looks great in both cases, but people with a more advanced browser get a nice treat - and that’s what it’s all about - make the content accessible, usable and considered for the people who won’t (or can’t) upgrade, then enhance for people who can and have. Simple.

Ben Darlow

June 16 2009 @ 09:15pm #

Um, Smashing Magazine? Reading comments on there and fearing for our industry is like reading Yahoo Answers and fearing for the human race.

Which is to say; OMFG ITS THE APOCALYPSE!!!1one.

Jeff

June 16 2009 @ 09:30pm #

Well I won’t use css3 just for the sake of it being “cool”...you can’t just simply forget ie.
I’m ok with progressive enhancement though, but I definitely won’t have two separate designs, one css3 one css 2.1.

And when asking “has the last 10 years been for nothing”...well, the fault is not on the web developers if you ask me. I work in a company where ie6 is the standard. Like it or not this is the reality. It’ll change eventually but I hardly see myself telling my boss I will use css3 on the intranet when I know everybody browses it with ie6.
It’ll change eventually but not now because a few web experts decided it.

Aaron Burrows

June 16 2009 @ 11:54pm #

Don’t fear, Mr. Clarke. I have been using, and will continue to use and add more CSS3 styles to my documents. I wonder if the people who left all those comments have even heard of progressive enhancement/enrichment.

CupidsToejam

June 17 2009 @ 02:57am #

It’s understandable whay people feel the way they do as illustrated from Smashing’s post comments. Although, I’m developing a design right now that can only be implemented using CSS3. Sure, it will not be the same on all browsers, but I feel this industry needs a very hard push forward into the (should be now) future. Start building sites with the newest tools available, and force the world to conform! This is unlikely to happen, but that’s where I stand.

Kevin

June 17 2009 @ 06:16am #

Have no fear, progressive enhancement is here!

John Fredrickson

June 17 2009 @ 06:35am #

If anything I find all this quite encouraging. The hordes of incompetent web designers only serve to make our efforts to improve our own abilities more valuable and satisfying. Don’t fear the man who refuses to embrace the future for he is not your competitor.

Aaron Russell

June 17 2009 @ 08:23am #

What Tim Van Damme said.

I don’t think Smashing Mag readers are cause for concern of the overall health of the industry. I expect most of them are under the age of 15 and just because they didn’t use CSS3 on their uncle’s nose-flute band website doesn’t reflect on the industry.

chris bovard

June 18 2009 @ 03:02am #

After seeing the article on smashing magazine, I was impressed it was something other than a listing of the “trends”.
I do not think you should fear this as this will keep the line drawn in the sand between developers (dare I use that word). This means more work for the people who are up to date (if you ever really are). I do not see too much clean html produced by the Web Companies here in this city (vancouver). I do not see them learning CSS3 anytime soon as they are still meshing out CSS2.

Anyway thanks again for the insight and all your writings!

c

Rhyaniwyn

June 18 2009 @ 04:08am #

I can definitely understand the defeated tone of those comments. I remember when I first found out about CSS (something like 11 years ago?). It wasn’t “new” really, but the browser support was atrocious. I tried to start using it; I was intrigued by the possibilities. But very shortly I gave up and said to myself, “I’ll come back to it in a few years when the browser support catches up.” Ultimately I got too frustrated to continue trying to use it. Even during the browser wars, my focus was always on making one version of a site display adequately in both Netscape and IE. That meant then (and still today) making sacrifices.

It’s very true that attitude doesn’t bode well for the potential of the industry to push the envelope. I’m sure we all realize that creativity is about pushing the boundaries. Radical adventurers in the throes of creative endeavor can’t worry too much about adhering to standards.

Web standards are still great and have been a blessing to the industry. It’s slowly become less and less frustrating to develop a cross-platform site that hits all the benchmarks I count most important. When a proposal like CSS 3 gains traction, I am torn between jubilation and despair. Oh, the exciting new features! Oh, the potential! ...Oh, god, the hopeless frustration of trying to reliably implement it. My realistic side knows that the cross-browser support for CSS 3 will be getting *close* just about the time CSS 4 is complete.

The light at the end of the tunnel has already been mentioned by previous commentators. The phrase “progressive enhancement” (which I irreverently think of as a glass-half-full version of “graceful degradation”) has become part of the best web designers’ vocabulary. So I don’t think the industry is doomed by conservative, pessimistic designers. We’ve got ways to move forward while maintaining appropriate cross-platform support.

Akhil

June 18 2009 @ 05:03pm #

Last week, I had to fight with a developer who was against the use of CSS3. To my relief, our Project Manager came to my rescue who believes in progressive enhancement. Can’t say how happy I was to hear that he is happy to go with css3. So I think the change is here, some people are little slow to accept it.

@John Fredrickson: That last line is superb!