Lisa Forgan's Blog

If you are a web developer you probably have heard about HTML5 and CSS3. There is so much hype about it that it seems to bring up many conflicts whether to use it or not. I did my research upon this style of coding and spent an ample amount of time from the start learning it. There are definitely benefits to learning it but I feel it has come out a little premature due to all the hacks and lack of browser support. Also, the W3C hasn’t even made this a standard of coding yet. If I remember right, they stated when HTML5 first was announced that they don’t expect it to be a standard for about another 10 years.

Because I like to be optimistic about stuff, I'm going to talk about the pros first and then get into the cons.

Here are some of the Pros:

• It lets you do drop shadows on boxes and text all with css
• use a variety of fonts replacements with @font-face (similar to Cufon) without needed sifr (flash based) or images
• Some very similar XML like tags (for example header, nav, article, section, footer)
• Gradients (css based and no need for images)
• Can do Canvas
• Simple Doctype

Here are some of the Cons:

• IE6-9 do not support most (almost all) of HTML5 and CSS3
• In order to get all the IE's to work consistently, you will need to use javascripts or specially coded htc files and also include the "behavior" attribute for certain stylings in your css. Even this may not cover all the new styling abilities.
• You need to do multiple hacks in order for it to look consistent and work across all browsers (this ends up adding way more code and looking like when css first came out and each browser didn't follow the same rules)
• It makes your code look dirty because it can lead to overcoding.

There are many reasons I believe it is a premature move to fully code in html5 and css3 without making sure your IE's work. IE is important and if you want to use HTML5, you will need extra time to make sure it is consistent. Most companies use IE6 still (especially non-profits). It is hard for them to upgrade due to time, software compatibility and money. Yes, they could easily download Firefox... but be real about this. They don’t! Sometimes it is because they aren't computer savvy or it is rules of their organization. So, in the meantime for all the developers who say don't code for IE6 or for any IE, remember that you are losing about 20% of your users and potential clients.

Now there are some clients who want their site to work in IE and don’t care if it looks exactly the same across browsers. You then can do Progressive enhancement. This is another method of coding that makes IE still usable and functional. Anyway, this is another topic for another time. :P