Pride and Prefixes

So the latest design wank that everyone is on lately is creating images using css3 only.
It’s like the introduction of rounded corners and gradients has burst a vein in everyone’s minds and they suddenly have to start spending their time creating images in css3 to try and land some pageviews. The Opera Logo was great, but everything else is just a rehashed party trick.

We get it. You can ‘do’ css3.

I’m not totally sure what it is about these little efforts of coding self-love that really tick me off. It’s like a family who has built their house from bottle caps or some shit. You know it took ages, and the end result is what? Resolution independent imagery? a reduction in HTTP requests? A confused screenreader?, A greasy handjob from a homeless guy in your Ferrari?

At the end of it all, this is a minor gripe compared to the major stink: Vendor Prefixes;
-webkit-vendor-prefixes; -moz-vendor-prefixes; -o-vendor-prefixes; -ms-vendor-prefixes; I’m sure we understand the risk of misguided innovation following IE6, but this is no reason to stick your name in front of any new property you think of adopting because you cant rely on another browser to implement a border-radius of 5px, as 5px. The end result is something that leaves a bad taste in my mouth: lines of code that have to be typed 3+ times, HTML5 ‘Demos’ from Apple that don’t work in firefox and websites that support only one browser rendering engine but still claim to be ‘the future of web design’. In short, an internet that is being built with no thought of future technologies or capabilities in mind.

It turns out I am not the only one with these sentiments, the obvious solution seeming to be to allow specific vendors to still be targeted via their prefixes, but the full set of browsers to be targeted by removing the prefix all together.

So there, i’ve weighed in.
Keep doing what you do.

2 Notes/ Hide

  1. anthea-whittle said: You really were having a rant, weren’t you? :)
  2. reconfine posted this