tags:

views:

241

answers:

9

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

+9  A: 

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.

Ionuț G. Stan
+1 for progressive enhancement. Those with more capable browsers get a better experience. Those with less capable browsers get an adequate experience. In no case should a user get an unsatisfactory experience. That said, one time this might be an issue is when different users in the same area use different browsers and it may confuse them to see the page laid out slightly different on another user's computer.
Grant Wagner
A: 

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 :(

Phill
A: 

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.

John Yeates
+3  A: 

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.

Tate Johnson
+1  A: 

We tend to use the proprietary methods followed by the CSS3 spec version for when the method becomes more widley supported.

If necessary (which isn't often) we use JQuery + IE conditional tags to render the same for IE.

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.

Chris M
A: 

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!

stoimen
A: 

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.

meunierd
A: 

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.

codedude
+2  A: 

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).

cpharmston