The Web We Should Have

The Web as we know it is based for the most part on ten year old technology.

There are many features that web designers have been craving for since the early 2000s that have been stuck in standardization limbo for many years and still now, in 2010, the web community has to support ancient browsers that just won't go away. Internet Explorer 6 is now nine years old. NINE YEARS!

Every time somebody builds a big commercial website, some 5-10% of the HTML development time is spent on making the site work on IE6, and there are many cool features that are still regularly cut from designs since IE6 or IE7 or even IE8 do not support them.

But there is some light at the end of the tunnel. Even with Microsoft dragging their feet on every new feature, the Web is slowly changing. HTML5 is not an official standard yet, but there are many features that have already been implemented by Firefox, Safari, Opera and Chrome - and for some of them there are adequate workarounds for IE7 & 8 that allow us finally to stretch a little bit, try something new... to experiment.

Here is a HTML5/CSS3 Cheatsheet that I've created mostly so that I don't have to look up the syntax on random web sites every time I want to use one of these. There's text shadows, box shadows, rounded corners, inline SVG and Canvas support. Many of these things will make the web a better looking place (and I'm sure we'll also see many anti-usecases in the near future!), and if you are a web developer you may find a use for these, too!