[jlarocco]

Fancy new features have been hurting performance since the beginning. Nobody notices it because new, faster hardware makes it a non-issue.

For example, in 1998 I could browse the web perfectly fine on a 100 Mhz Pentium with 32 Mb of RAM. If new features didn't hurt performance then I would still be able to browse the web perfectly fine on a 100 Mhz Pentium today.

box-shadow is just a specific example. In five years even the crappiest smart phone will have enough CPU/GPU power to display box-shadows without any noticeable slow down.

[smackfu]

Sorry, I disagree. If you sacrifice performance (and thus usability) for simple aesthetics, that's the wrong choice.

[rhizome]

I suppose you don't use a GUI, then?