Honestly, if we keep pandering to IE as the lowest common denominator – we as a design/dev community are saying go ahead IE, dictate the course of the web to us. However; if we build for the future of the web we want, by providing better experiences in browsers that are support modern standards and techniques, we can help drive technology forward.

Browser update models and release structures have changed for the better ensuring faster adoption of new standards and the IT departments and out moved browser manufacturers that aren’t paying attention will be left behind.

And if the content is also designed to work on these outdated browser platforms then there is absolutely nothing wrong with using new techniques and tools that modern browsers support.

Your jQuery example only supports the argument for CSS3 being used and implemented. Does anyone remember the day when your web pages had to work without javascript. This argument, in my opinion holds no water. CSS is a presentation layer and should be used for visual styles as well as layout.

I agree that ‘progressive enhancement’ is a viable approach but favour ‘graceful degridation’ as it’s focus is on pushing technology forward first.

Progressive enhancement VS Graceful Degradation is the real debate at the heart of this article.

Progressive Enhancement == Build for the world as it appears at this exact moment and extend it to more mature browsers that are driving the technology.

Graceful Degradation == Build for the world we want and ensure that people using reasonably older technology can still get to the content.

Both will achieve a similar result, but the intent and purpose are different. Do you want to push the technology forward or slow it down and try to keep it where it’s at?

I’m not worried. The problem is more that we tend to see a trend where people show off their “glorious” stuff with the latest “cool” thing that doesn’t work for 70% of users.

It is a little like when people that design only on MACs show of their cool stuff with the problem being that it look like crap on a PC due to difference in anti aliasing. It’s just so blatantly lame on unprofessional.

The reason i wrote the post is due to the fact that i’m so sick of posts showing the latest and greatest in CSS3, but that never seem to consider those other 70% that lives in the real world (“real world” as in The Matrix — yes!).

For now CSS3 seems to be more about effects and less about *REAL* layout. I really miss stuff like cross browser columns (for text content) etc that really *WORK* (not a javascript hack that “sort of work”).

Users who have old browsers such as IE6/IE7 or just IE in general deserve to suffer a little. They end up suffering ascetically.

Some of the webkit only transform CSS3 is a bit wild but never useless…