Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), the way in which web designers and developers add color, styling, spacing, layout elements, etc. to the web sites they create, are about the see a huge change.
CSS3
CSS3, is already becoming very popular and the features that it has, unlike CSS2, will create an explosion of creativity in web design. In short, while we have seen a massive explosion in rich internet experiences in the past few years with the adoption of AJAX and FLASH, the best creativity, and the ease in which designers and developers will be able to implement those features, is yet to come!
Chris Spooner, of Blog.SpoonGraphics, posted a great article on some of the features that designers and developers can use today. He also warns us though on the potential downfalls to some of the CSS3 features that are not widely available for “that browser” we all know and love and, as designers, learned to accept.
There are exciting new features in the pipeline for Cascading Style Sheets that will allow for an explosion of creativity in Web design. These features include CSS styling rules that are being released with the upcoming CSS3 specification. Realistically, you won’t be able to use these on your everyday client projects for another few years, but for design blogs and websites aimed at the Web design community, these features can help you push the boundaries of modern Web design today, adding that extra spice to your design and helping the industry move forward.
5 Techniques You Can Use Today
1. Border Radius
2. Border Image
3. Box Shadow and Text Shadow
4. Easy Transparency with RGBA and Opacity
5. Custom Web Fonts with @Font-Face
Previous to CSS3, all of the above had to be accomplished with complex css styling and scripting
Note Of Warning…Internet Explorer…ugh
46% of Internet users won’t see these features, so don’t use them as a crucial part of the design of your website. Make sure that secondary options are in place, such as a standard border in place of border-image and a normal font in place of @font-face.
Read more at SmashingMagazine.
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