| You make it sound as if Developers are solely to blame for this "mess", and they did it for superflous reasons. I call BS on that. Case and point: Border radius and linear gradients made things better for EVERYONE. Developers didn't have to create the html/js/css/image mess just to create rounded corners. This meant less code, less images, less css, which also translates to snappier websites. (and users like that.. there are studies that prove that) This also meant that, as a company, we decided that IE had to live with a degraded experience until they made their browsers competitive with all the others. (and users had access to said browsers) As a Front End Engineer, I find it insulting that you suggest we are doing it for "fun" or to make our resume look better. This makes our lives better, and we have to consciously decide who gets a degraded experience and who gets the better experience. I think we call that "graceful degradation" or "progressive enhancement". You stated: "They allow you to create novel effects which you can then discuss in your blog", if these are novel effects then why do... You state that websites are "broken" for non-webkit browsers on mobile. Well then maybe my definition of broken and yours differ. I say a "broken website" is one where the content CANNOT be consumed by the end users. Also if the end users have functionality that is broken, and therefore prevents them from accessing / modifying content. I DO NOT think broken means, degraded visual experience. When we decided that IE would get square corners, and flat background (instead of rounded corners and linear gradient backgrounds), we knew that IE would still be consuming the content just the same. Therefore, please inform me which -webkit prefixed css is causing the breakage I define. (where consumers are blocked from the content) "This looks bad", doesn't count. Now granted, I'll give you that as developers, we should be using all prefixes that are supported. It might be a pain in the ass, but that's our job. I'm with you there, and I'm going through my current css to find if any are missing -ms, -o, -moz and the default fallback css. Considering I use a preprocessor for my css, I'm pretty safe, except on my blog, (which has no preprocessor yet). I suggest all of us developers do the same. But this is a "nice to have" not the "the mobile web is broken!" as browser vendors are rallying. Again, if you can prove to me, that the web is broken under my definition, I will take my words back for those specific css rules according to their proliferation on the web. |