Internet Explorer Users Don’t Care About Rounded Corners

Lee — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:30:39 +0000

Internet Explorer users don’t care about rounded corners. Bold statement? Perhaps. But recently I’ve taken this approach to a few designs as I’m tired of having to use some sort of rounded corner hack to support IE. It’s a lot easier to just use the CSS 3 declaration.

If you’re up-to-date with your CSS knowledge, you’ll know that CSS 3 has introduced rounded corners, among other ‘goodies’. The problem is though that IE doesn’t support CSS 3 yet but Firefox, Safari and Chrome do.

Some CSS 3 techniques I’ve been using on Sharethrough and Lookaly:

CSS 3 rounded corners

div{
-moz-border-radius: 10px;
-webkit-border-radius: 10px;
}

CSS 3 text shadow

div{
text-shadow: -1px -1px 3px rgba(0,0,0,0.25);
}

CSS 3 box shadow

img{
-webkit-box-shadow:0 0 5px 5px rgba(34,34,34,0.3);
-moz-box-shadow:0 0 5px 5px rgba(34,34,34,0.3);
}

But how do you deal with clients?

This is where it gets tricky. If you show a client a mockup with rounded corners and the final solution doesn’t have these (because they use IE) they’ll probably not be too happy.

If you’re working with computer savvy clients, who use Safari or Firefox, they should understand. If you’re working on your own personal or side project, happy days. If not, you can try Andy Clarke’s approach of designing in the browser. Time to stop showing clients static design visuals is a very good article about skipping the static mockup stage.

Conclusion

The point I’m trying to make here is that as long as it looks OK in all browsers, we can afford to take liberties when it comes to making it look nicer for those who use Firefox and Safari. Most designers use Firefox or Safari and they’ll appreciate the rounded corners more. IE users *probably* don’t care.

What do you think? Have you started using CSS 3 in your designs? Do you think IE users should get to see the rounded corners too? Share your thoughts below.

Quicktip: Auto-Complete Blog Comment Fields

Lee — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 10:02:58 +0000

You like to comment on blog posts but you’re sick of having to enter the usual name, mail and website fields (even with autofill it still requires effort).

If you’re using Firefox there’s a handy solution. EasyComment is a plugin that stores this default information for you. Then, when you’re on a blog post and you want to leave a comment, click the easyComment button and it will fill in all the fields. You can even enter a default message like ‘Nice post, thanks’ if that’s all you want to say.

Click here to get easyComment.

The easyComment button is located at the bottom of your browser window.

Without easyComment, it takes approximately 10 seconds to fill in your name, email and url. Assuming you leave 1 comment per day, that’s 70 seconds per week or 310 seconds per month or 3,650 seconds per year you’ll save. That’s an extra hour you could be playing Halo or World of Warcraft