What to do with CSS3?

Recently, there has been a lot of activity on the CSS3 front.  W3C have only just released a new set of CSS3 specifications (http://www.css3.info/) that will already change the level of support that the newer generation of browsers can offer.  The change fundamentally means that only updates to these new browsers will enable support for these new specifications.  There aren't any massive changes in there so there aren't any nasty surprises for those learning the new specifications.

These changes are great in terms of moving forward with standardised specifications, but also potentially harmful with the lack of support currently out there. Only a couple of days ago (15th March 2011), Microsoft released their latest and greatest weapon in the browser wars, Internet Explorer 9.

The release of IE9 is a massive roll of the dice for Microsoft.  Microsoft has seen the market share for Internet Explorer slowly erode over the past few years with the continued efforts of the likes of Firefox, Chrome and Safari, all of which have had CSS3 support for quite some time now though.  By all means, none of these browsers are perfect, and all have their own small problems supporting the CSS3 specifications.  They aren't problems as such, more like, their own interpretations of the specifications.  Personally for me, this is potentially worse than the old 'IE box model' problems that plagued earlier versions of Internet Explorer.  What I really don't want to happen is for me to suddenly have to adopt several standards of the CSS3 specifications.  For example, to have rounded borders for an element, we have to look at the following:

• border-radius (Real CSS3 / IE9 specification)
• -moz-border-radius (Firefox specification)
• -webkit-border-radius (Safari / Chrome specifiction)

So now we have the situation whereby if I want to go down the route of making my site work compltely with CSS3, I have to add all of the above just to get rounded borders without having the hassle of using images to make the rounded corners.

To be fair to Microsoft on this, they have correctly followed the specification laid out by W3C.  You never thought that you would see that did you?  Early reviews and personal testing have found that IE9 is a massive improvement in many aspects such as speed, security and usability.  I actually prefer this browser to any other now.  IE8 was too buggy and would eat memory like there was no tomorrow and Firefox would crash for no apparent reason.  I do like Safari, but things sometimes look a bit odd in it, as does in Chrome.  Saying this, Microsoft have done themselves no favours by restricting the platform for IE9 to Windows 7 - probably to encourage those who are still on XP to upgrade.

What I have done so far is give in to these horrible new varied specifications.  A new site that I am working on for myself employs all of the bulleted list above.  I believe that we are currently at the turning point for moving to CSS3, although HTML5 is further away I feel.  All of the latest browsers support CSS3 whilst support for the older browsers will suddenly start to slide.  From what I have read already, IE9 already has 2% of the market.  Not a bad achievement for a product released only two days ago.