Take Your Design To The Next Level With CSS3

Cascading Style Sheets were introduced 13 years ago, and the widely adopted CSS 2.1 standard has existed for 11 years now. When we look at websites that were created 11 years ago, it’s clear that we are a thousand miles away from that era. It is quite remarkable how much Web development has evolved over the years, in a way we would never have imagined then.

So why is it that, when it comes to CSS, we’re stuck in the past and so afraid of experimenting? Why is it that we still use inconvenient CSS hacks and JavaScript-dependent techniques for styling? Why can’t we make use of the rich CSS3 features and tools available in modern Web browsers and take the quality of our designs to the next level?

It’s time to introduce CSS3 features into our projects and not be afraid to gradually incorporate CSS3 properties and selectors in our style sheets. Making our clients aware of the advantages of CSS3 (and letting older deprecated browsers fade away) is in our power, and we should act on it, especially if it means making websites more flexible and reducing development and maintenance costs.

In this article, we’ll look at the advantages of CSS3 and some examples of how Web designers are already using it. By the end, we’ll know a bit of what to expect from CSS3 and how we can use its new features in our projects.

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/06/15/take-your-design-to-the-next-level-with-css3/