The thing I hate most in CSS3 is that there is always two properties you should put to do one effect. I think this is not professional, and increase the CSS size. For example, why don't they unite -webkit-border-radius and -moz-border-radius in border-radius
Imagine if we have 10 browsers, will we write 10 lines to do a rounded corner effect? Anyone can explain?
It's because they're vendor-specific. -webkit- and -moz- -prefixed properties are not standard properties. That "namespacing" allows vendors to test new cool features, and if they're great, they can be incorporated into the standards. This is what is happening with CSS3: Mozilla and the Webkit team tried cool things, and now they're going to become standard. It's just not done yet. Eventually it'll become a consistent border-radius property.
It's a clear way to indicate that something is not expected to work on all browsers. For instance, -webkit-transition-property only works on Webkit-based browsers.
Anyways, -webkit-border-radius and -moz-border-radius don't exactly work the same. It's because each vendor, even though they're doing similar things, are allowed to implement features the way they want. The standard will establish a standard way, but everyone is free to do whatever they want within their own namespace.
-webkit-border-radius and -moz-border-radius were created before the CSS3 borders standard was a complete (it is still not an approved standard - it is currently a Candidate Recommendation).
The standard calls for a border-radius only, as you can see from the specification.
They are specific to mozilla and webkit - once the standard is approved this should change to be border-radius on all supporting browsers.
Related
Good morning all.
Today I'm struggling with the following code: source on jsFiddle
What I have been trying to achieve is a seemingly simple image rollover effect where 'a mirror' of an image covers the original one using some css3 effects.
Chrome 12 transforms the image perfectly
Firefox 5 stops transformation when the image runs into mouse cursor
IE9 - there is no transformation at all, the image is just shaking
Opera - not checked
How do I do this cross-browser compatible?
I think I got it to work in Firefox 5 the way you want. See http://jsfiddle.net/X2eN6/7/
According to CanIUse.com, IE9 doesn't support CSS3 Transitions, so I guess that's why it's not working for you in IE9.
The browsers that support the feature are Firefox (from v4), Chrome, Safari and Opera. But it's worth pointing out that transitions currently require a vendor prefix in all browsers that support them.
A vendor prefix means one of two things: either the spec is not finalised yet, so the feature is subject to possible change in syntax, or else the browser's own support for the feature is not yet considered complete.
Chrome has been supporting transitions for ages, so it's no surprise that everything works there. Firefox has only recently added it, so since they require a vendor prefix, you should take that as a warning that things may not be guaranteed to work 100%.
I am getting this display in IE 7
I am getting this display in Firefox:
for the following code
Could anybody point me, What I should do to make the IE Display simalar to Firefox and also, How Do I make the Size should be same for all the headings?
Internet Explorer does not support gradients, shadows, nor border-radius properties. border-radius is supported in IE9, but this won't be of much help!
You can look into CSS3 Pie, which uses IE-specific .htc files to achieve almost the same effect.
For now, if you really need to be fully compatible with all IE's (and other browsers for that matter) I'd use an image. It's not very nice but at least you can rest assured that it will always work ;-)
Rounded corners and drop shadow aren't going to work in IE7 without a lot of clever image tricks. You can't fix it through CSS alone.
Alternatively you could probably find a JavaScript plugin which would create these effects for you if you don't mind taking that route (see curvy corners for example).
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!
I just noticed that Stack Overflow employs Firefox only CSS to round the corners of the user badges on the front page. It's an interesting idea but what would be the pitfalls and advantages of using Firefox only CSS (aside from the blatantly obvious ones)?
-moz-border-radius:6px;
-webkit-border-radius:6px;
Above: The CSS used to round corners on the Stack Overflow front page.
The main problem would be, as I see it, that your css wouldn't validate. Other than that I see no reason why not to use this type of platform specific features as they don't cause any harm to users whose browsers don't support the features.
The advantages are that it's much easier than using corner images or other tricks. The obvious disadvantage is that your page doesn't render as intended on IE, which is still used by more than half the world's web users.
Overall it's situational; I imagine SO gets a higher than usual proportion of people using Firefox, so the IE issue is not as relevant. And rounded corners are a minor visual improvement, so if some people see it and some don't, it's not that big a deal.
I agree with BeefTurkey.
I might even go further and call it a case of Progressive Enhancement with CSS. To borrow liberally from Understanding Progressive Enhancement, I'd consider rounded corners to be part of the colorful candy coating around the chocolate-covered peanut.
And eventually CSS3 will be ratified and border-radius will be standardized. -moz, -webkit and -ms prefixed styles can be removed and replaced with their standard equivalents. Your CSS will validate and people using browsers that don't support CSS3 will still have a completely acceptable experience with people using browsers that do support CSS3 will get an enhanced experience.
Alternatively you could continue to use the proprietary CSS in addition to any standards to give an enhanced experience to an even larger audience. It would really depend on how much effort maintaining all that CSS requires and how important you feel the enhanced experience is to your audience.
It works in Firefox and the Webkit-based browsers (notably Safari and Chrome). There are no alternatives for IE or Opera.
The main reason to use it is when you want to give rounded corners to elements that display on top of patterned or unpredictable backgrounds, which is not possible otherwise. Normal CSS and images can take care of other situations.
It's also ridiculously easy to implement and surely works for more than half the people on this site.
Pitfalls are of course that it's not supported in other browsers and its not in the W3C specification.
The current implementation is bad (both in firefox and webkit) since they do not share the syntax.