Theres a lot of buzz out there on the internet about CSS3 and how its new coding features will produce a faster more visually attractive web. I came across some great tutorials already online here are just a few of them.

http://designshack.co.uk/articles/introduction-to-css3-part-1-what-is-it
http://www.kremalicious.com/2008/04/make-cool-and-clever-text-effects-with-css-text-shadow/
http://kilianvalkhof.com/2008/design/almost-cross-browser-text-shadow/
http://css3please.com/
http://www.css3.info/preview/

What struck me most about some of the new functionality is its lack of compatibility with Internet Explorer. IE continually stands out as the browser which refuses to comply with internet standards, instead it wants to push its own unique methods.

I’ve been trying to think of a reason why IE puts up these barriers to compliance other than to be difficult. When you look at the latest IE hacks for text effects many of them actually contain the word ‘microsoft’ as part of the code. Is this some sort of marketing scheme where if you keep typing microsoft enough times you’ll eventually incur its unholy spirit.

Anyway to me its just like ASP, platform specific to windows which always causes problems in making your code more transferable.

Another thing noticeable about CSS3 is its inclusion of JQuery functions, I don’t have a tremendous amount of experience with JQuery but some of its more visual features have crossed over. Overall CSS3 makes it a lot easier for the web programmer to tinker and create more visual effects in browser but what about users?

Most of the non technical world still uses IE and so won’t get to see a lot of these new features. Arguably they do gracefully revert to standard settings on older browsers, it just doesn’t look as cool if you cant see the drop shadow.

The enthusiasm for CSS3 within the technical world is quite encouraging but without the support of general internet users a lot of this will go over their heads. I’m sure some users won’t be upgrading to the latest version of their browser, they may even see it as a detrimental move.

If they don’t see the point of enriching their internet experience why should they? Even though I’m not overly keen on Google their forced upgrade scheme for Chrome isn’t a totally bad idea. Getting novice users used to the idea of change could be overall beneficial to the industry with people wanting the ‘latest’ browser rather than being afraid and sticking to the safe and familiar.

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