As I stated in my previous blog it is now perfectly feasible to use HTML5 and CSS3 in a production environment, however, Internet Explorer versions 6, 7 and 8 can still be a problem.

Luckily for all of us developing in HTML5 Mathias Bynens has written a fascinating article entitled “In defense of CSS hacks — introducing “safe CSS hacks”“. In general developers use three different ways to cope with Internet Explorer idiosyncrasies 1) conditional stylesheets 2) CSS hacks, or 3) conditional classnames and each of these approaches has its followers and detractors. As far as I know no one had, until now, documented the best ways to use these three approaches and Mathias’ has done us a great service by posting a clear list with many pros and cons for each.

It may be that in certain cases one approach works best but in others a different approach works better (for example conditional stylesheets cause repeated http requests and this may be unacceptable in many situations where bandwidth is an issue).

I think Mathias has done a great job here and his article deserves to be widely read.

After far too long with HTML4 and the much less used XHTML it seems that with the release of Internet Explorer 9 we can start developing all our sites in HTML5 / CSS3. This might seem like a bold statement, especially with the high number of people still using old browsers (30% according to many) but with a little care it is perfectly possible to code world class websites that function well in all browsers.

The HTML5 logo

Needless to say, the elephant in the room is Internet Explorer, versions 6, 7 and 8 are still around in large numbers and only support parts of the W3C HTML4 standard, never mind HTML5 / CSS3. However, there are fairly simple workarounds that allow these browsers to function well while allowing more advanced browsers to implement much more of the HTML5 specification. In fact it is nearly a year now since Slashdot published an article entitled ‘How To Use HTML5 Today‘. Recently the pendulum has begun to swing in the other direction with writers starting to bemoan the lack of features, especially those features that smartphones could use such as gyroscopes, and Matt Lewis has written an interesting article for Rethink Wireless called HTML5 reality check.

For businesses as well as developers the reasons for building sites in HTML5 / CSS3 are good. There are many features, such as rounded corners, that require images to create in HTML4 that can be achieved quickly in HTML5 / CSS3. There are quite a few new tags that can help the web developer achieve a much more semantically accurate website, in time this will allow much more accurate searching for the likes of Google. Tags such as <article> and <aside> can be used to make the meaning of a page much more obvious. CSS media queries are a feature I have been using already in a production environment as this allows me to code for different devices depending on screen resolution (among other things). Coding for desktop, tablet or phone has never been easier.

I feel that as long as care is taken there is no need to wait to implement HTML5 / CSS3 in designs today.