I'm just wondering what is the least expensive way to use a lot of gradients in a site's design.
I feel certain that CSS will be less expensive for the browser than SVG, but I could not justify this without tests. I would suggest that you create your page with your many gradients in CSS and if (and only if) you find performance to be a problem should you try SVG or other technologies.
I would lean more towards CSS for this one. Seeing as it is CODE rather than an image.
Also, if you are leaning more towards using CSS, why not make it viewable and or workable in IE 8 and below, via CSS3pie? http://css3pie.com/
This is an interesting question. In my personal experience webkit has been faster with svg, but I could be wrong.
I created a test fiddle with css transitions and they look about the same, perhaps someone with more experience can extend the stress case:
http://jsfiddle.net/KLCEw/
Keep in mind that SVG gradients are best embedded through data-uri's so they don't create new requests to the server.
Related
The more and more we venture into the wonderful world of CSS3, the more and more we all get annoyed by the fact that these features require a MASSIVE amount of browser prefixes to allow compatibility with some older browsers. This problem becomes quite apparent even for small sites, where we need 4 or 5 CSS properties for the exact same effect. A common example would be the background property for gradients.
I know that there are scripts that can help with this issue, but before resorting to those, is there a pure CSS fix that would allow you to work around the prefix issue, or at the very least, some sort of method to keep the extra amount of typing to a minimum? That is, combining things, shorthand, whatever. CSS files can easily double with CSS3-rich content.
I totally agree to the excessive code need to accomplish the same effects in CSS3 but that issue is on the browsers side as other comments stated.
One design practice/tool/technique i think best to follow is using LESS when writing css.
I see the The possibility of over coming this issue (for now) with it. Checkout it out here. http://alittlecode.com/handling-multiple-css3-transitions-with-a-less-mixin/.
If you are not sure what is LESS then check this out - http://www.lesscss.org/.
Yes it is pure CSS from my perspective, but no as stated before, it won't reduce the size of files.
I just got into web development 2 months ago for a personal project. I am know facing an issue for which I would appreciate some advice of experienced people. In my project, I am using a lot css3 "effects": border-radius, box-shadows, gradients,etc. The thing is, I am now confronted to cross-browser issues. So my question is simple. Is it better to apply css hacks or use images (psd slicing)? Thank you in advance for your replies. Cheers. Marc.
I think you want to do a combination of both. PSD slicing will make it harder to update and maintain, whereas hacks don't usually get you what you want. Check out http://css3pie.com/ to see how you can incorporate most of the CSS3 techniques with IE. It's a great resource and I use it every day. It only works well for some items though, like drop shadow doesn't work well with PIE. For something like that you might do a background image of a drop shadow.
If you use some psd slicing make sure that the people that are visiting your website will not have any issues with slow loading. Truth be told, lots of people have a decent internet connection now so having a few more psd slicing will not be a problem.
Just make sure your images are well optimised for web and that should do the trick !
There are certainly items that you can use images for, but above all else, you are better off embracing the principals of progressive enhancement and making something that is compliant with current web standards. Older browsers are slowly going away, but web standards are not.
Ensure that all visitors to the site are able to access the most important parts of the site. Parts of the site may need to gracefully degrade and hide some features that are mainly aesthetic. You can then apply appropriate fixes for those areas that could either be CSS hacks or images (for example, drop shadows and gradients).
Is it possible to create the following without use of images, just using css3?
Yep. The relevant things you'll want to look up are gradients, text-shadow, and 2D transforms.
You'll need to do better with accepting answers to questions you've asked, and ask questions that show you've tried it yourself before you'll get better answers, most likely. People aren't going to give you the code if you've shown no effort to try to do it yourself.
Yes, it's possible.
CSS border-radius, gradients, text-shadow and #font-face will get you quite a bit of the way.
Those angled tabs are going to be a massive pain to get right, and likely to have cross-browser issues. You'll probably be able to get them right using CSS transform, but it'll require separate DOM elements for the edges, otherwise you'll transform your text as well.
The outward curves at the bottom of the tabs will also be tricky. I can't see an easy way to achieve that.
Assuming your aim is to do it without images, rather than simply as a CSS excersise, then a better solution might be to do it using SVG. You can incorporate SVG as elements within your page, so no separate downloads, and it should be fairly straightforward to achieve the results you want -- certainly much easier than with pure CSS.
SVG won't work in older versions of IE (IE8 and below), but since you're asking about CSS3, I assume that's not an issue for you. If it is an issue, then you can use a library like Raphael or SVG2VML to convert the SVG into VML on the fly for IE.
There are some eye-candy experimental CSS like border-radius (rounded corners) and gradients that I wish to use on my page. Unfortunately Internet Explorer does not support any of that yet. At least border-radius is coming on IE9, no word on gradients yet.
So would you recommend just leaving IE alone (most of my users will be on FF or Chrome anyways) or use images to "fix" the presentation for IE? Is it even worth it? Because I know that not only is a pain in the behind but might also break styling on other browsers.
So, to hack or not to hack?
Although this question is a bit subjective, my answer would be not to hack. CSS3 was made to be backwards compatible, and that means it will degrade gracefully if a browser doesn't support it. That for me is the way it should be. I mean, why use CSS3 if you're still planning to hack it anyway? In that case just use the plain old CSS2 tricks like javascript rounded corners or images so you do't have to hack per se.
Terminology quibble: using images to imitate CSS3 features in IE isn’t really hacking. Any visual effect that isn’t directly supported in CSS will need to be implemented in images.
But to answer your question, it depends:
If few enough of your audience use IE, then you can ignore it. Figuring out how few is few enough is up to you/the site owners.
If not:
If the border-radius effects aren’t a key part of the site’s branding, then I’d suggest you just let IE ignore them and use square corners. No-one browses the web with two browsers simultaneously, and no-one cares if your site looks a little bit different in IE 6, as long as the buttons are in the same place and everything works.
If they are a key part of the site’s branding, or your client insists on the site looking the same in IE 6, then you’ve got to achieve the look in IE 6. So, either:
use border-radius, and use conditional comments to include a stylesheet for IE 8 and below with code to imitate the features
don’t bother with border-radius — use the code that works in IE for all browsers. This will avoid you having to maintain two sets of code, but it will mean that all browsers have to download the images you’re using for IE, thus making them perform slightly less well.
I don't think its ever a choice between 'hacking' and not implementing it at all across all browsers, and I'm surprised nobody has mentioned one of the real life-saving 'feature' (I won't consider it a hack, since it is a brilliant method for backward compatibility): Conditional Comments
Not only does it help with annoying IE bugs, it also allows you to define less desirable, but still 100% valid methods for getting certain effects to work, like image gradients with repeat-y instead of CSS3 gradients, or tiled semi-transparent pngs for IE7 and 8. Really, if you want to, IE shouldn't be the one single factor that will limit your ability to experiment with CSS3.
if you do not want images, IE hacks or a seperate stylesheet you could always check out CSS3Pie: http://css3pie.com/. It's not perfect, especially not when you want some gradients & shadows but it can deal with rounded corners pretty easily. There are similar IE behaviors out there but I think this one has the most active development at the moment.
There are hacks and then there are hacks. I interpret a "hack" as being something that exploits a flaw in the browser, such as the descendant selector hack in IE (using >). Those types of things break when the browser is updated.
I don't consider using images to create nice drop shadows or gradients to be a hack. It may not satisfy the requirements that you are doing everything semantically, and you may feel queasy about resorting to using an image for something that an image should not be required for, but the reality is that there's simply no choice - no way to do everything the clean, no-images way - if you want pretty gradients and shadows on the majority of people's browsers (Internet Explorer being that majority).
If you consider the rounded borders or gradients to be just optional eye-candy then by all means don't worry about IE. But if you consider that it actually does make your design look good and you don't want the majority of your users* to miss out, then go for it.
*Depending on your audience, IE may or may not make up a majority of your audience I guess.
That really depends on how important those features are to the look and feel of the site, or rather how important the client and design team feel they are. Additionally its a quation of how much is this going to bloat your markup and CSS - ie. depending on how the effects need to be built in the context of the design how much of a hassle is it going to be?
Normally in this case im in favor of progressive enhancment, ie. come up with something suitable but it doesnt need to be a 1-to-1 to the composite art. Again though, this is a decision you as a developer will ever really be in a position to make on your own (well, unless youre also the designer).
With lots of talk and bickering among developers about how IE breaks standards, is it worth supporting mozilla and webkit CSS?
Examples
-moz-border-radius
-webkit-border-radius
Of course there are many more, but I just want to know everyone's thoughts.
Thanks
For IE, we were (are?) using proprietary features in order to eliminate rendering bugs. At least, in the case of FF and WebKit, we're using them to improve the design. It's progressive enhancement in this case. No one suffers if they have no border-radius feature, but we as developers get more satisfaction for using some CSS3 features. Our designs are more pleasing and W3C gets the feedback it needs in order to improve and then approve the CSS3 draft.
Rounded corners are proposed in the W3C CSS3 working draft. The proprietary extensions in Gecko and WebKit are already likely to conform to the working draft.
Given that rounded corners are purely aesthetic, there's no disadvantage to users with browsers who do not support rounded corners.
When the standard becomes final, it's a simple matter of replacing these proprietary rules with the standardised ones.
If you define -moz-border-radius and -webkit-border-radius, make sure and define -khtml-border-radius (Konqueror), -opera-border-radius, and plain old border-radius as well (for future-proofing purposes).
We tend to use the proprietary methods followed by the CSS3 spec version for when the method becomes more widley supported.
http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-background/#the-border-radius
If necessary (which isn't often) we use JQuery + IE conditional tags to render the same for IE.
http://malsup.com/jquery/corner/
http://www.quirksmode.org/css/condcom.html
It really all depends on your target audience, we wouldn't generally use unsupported CSS on a public facing site as 89% of our users are still using IE 6/7 so it would be useless to most of them.
We currently use it on a few admin systems and some internal systems; mostly to give the design team exposure to the new techniques.
Consider your target audience, browser specs based on analytic's and how necessary it really is first.
I'd support both, IE still has a big chunk of the user space, with Firefox and others (opera, safari etc..) occupying a smaller percentage of the browser market.
using mozilla only stuff might be ok if you can control what your clients are using, by recommending it in some way (if you're writing a web app. with a fixed user base) and even then someone will still insist on using IE.
I know its a pain in the backside supporting both, but I don't think web developers have much choice in the matter :(
In the case of border-radius, I'd say use the Mozilla/Webkit syntax if you don't mind IE/Opera users having squared corners.
If you need everyone to see the same thing, it's best to stick with the old techniques for now. Similarly, any non-universal CSS (say, using #font-face to download a custom symbol font) which is going to break the site for some people should stay out.
There's no harm in implementing CSS3 features so long as they degrade gracefully. So long as rounded corners, or what have you, aren't critical to your layout there's no harm having them there for the people who are running bleeding edge web browsers.
I know from personal experience that having those properties(specifically the corner radius ones) are very much a time-saver. Now of course it would be nice if css would just implement it into itself but right now I think that those properties are very helpful. I see no reason why we shouldn't support them. Mozilla's and Safari/Chrome's engines are just trying to make life a little easier.
I don't think this is a good practice. However you'd like that the site you're working on appears the same on every browser. That's why that's not a solution. It's not professional to have different layouts on different browser.
But if you don't care about that, or your application is based on only that browser - so it's completely fine!