HTML5 and CSS3 with Chris Mills
March 25, 2010On March 19th, Chris Mills of Opera Software came to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga to talk about the new features of HTML5 and CSS3. I’ve always been interested in the HTML and CSS side of sites, but what he showed to us was shocking to me. Even as a frequent user of “View Source” and Google to get answers to CSS features that I browse for, most of what he showed was new to me.
Having used HTML4.01 for a while now, I know the effort it takes to complete certain tasks, such as finding the right doctype, embedding javascripts and flash, and adding little touches to the design. With the current CSS knowledge that I have, it would take at least two background images and several divs or classes to create rounded corners for sections. In HTML5 and CSS3, it takes one line: border-radius: 10px;
Other cool features that CSS3 offered were features that originally had to be reproduced through flash and javascript.
My biggest hype(next to transitions) was: @font-face
It does exactly what you’re probably thinking: allows users to download the custom font to display on your site.
Before this, there were many attempts to do the same thing, including Image Replacement, sIFR(Scalable Inman Flash Replacement), Cufón, and FLIR. (source)
The @font-face is the CSS3′s way of embedding fonts into your website and requires only a handful of code in the CSS file. The only issue, of course, is Copyright with that font, so make sure that it is permitted to allow downloads of the font you use.
Instead of listing all of the features he went over, I’d like to end the post by saying that what Chris Mills showed was jaw-droppingly awesome to me. Since then, I have already been experimenting with CSS3 and seeing what I can come up with.
For information on Chris Mill’s talk, as well as slides and samples, visit here.
