When can we use transparency in PNG files? How about rounded corners via CSS 3?
This project is tracking all the new upcoming web technologies, like CSS 3, which will allow us to have rounded corners without having to use images. Also, elements such as Canvas. Also, other technologies, such as transparency in PNG images.
Right now, none of these technologies are usable because at least one major browser doesn’t support them. But clearly, over the next year, most of these technologies will become usable in all major, newer browsers. Then the question becomes, at what point do these features have enough market share that you’d want to use them on a commercial site?
The reality that a new version of HTML will soon come out makes me aware of how stagnant things have been for the last 6 or 7 years. Compared to the incredible speed with which things evolved during 1994 to 1999, the last few years have been one of consolidation:
I’ve younger friends who’ve become web designers in the last 4 years and who’ve never seen an evolution of the technology. They learned CSS 2 and HTML 4, and that is what they are still using now.
Universities now offer classes in something called “web design”.
There is now a profession called “web design”.
This profession is now in control of the standards around which the profession does its work.
The usual balance-of-power conflicts between for-profit corporations and the professions, have become normal for the field.
Consolidation has been the rule. Perhaps it was necessary.
The web is in desperate need of new element options. My friend Chris Clarke likes to joke that HTML 5 will bring web forms up to the level of interaction offered by Visual Basic 1.0. I am hopeful that this next year will rekindle the forward momentum of innovation.