Curvy Corners

MSDN has a new article on doing rounded corners in IE (via IEBlog). None of the solutions they suggest really separates content and presentation well – they all involve extra markup of one sort or another. It’s amusing that they criticise the four-divs-and-CSS solution as being “difficult to read”, having just suggested a table-based solution which is a lot more markup-heavy.

My current favourite method is the Nifty Corners JavaScript library. (Note that the version I link to is free software; later versions are not.) After all, if JS is turned off, you just get square corners. No big deal.

I also note with interest the following quote from the article:

So, you’re staring at your Web site. It all looks very boxy, and you’re thinking that it would be nice if you could add some rounded corners. Perhaps you’re tired of waiting for the W3C to release the CSS3 Recommendations, which will include specifications for rounded corners, and – even better – several border properties. The good news is that you don’t have to wait any longer…

I am glad that Microsoft is committed to supporting CSS3 as soon as it is released, as it’s clear from this quote that the unfinished nature of the spec is the only thing holding them back.

8 thoughts on “Curvy Corners

  1. Wow. Some pretty advanced hacks there :-D (not). Seriously, I thought they would have something interesting when I read the post at IEBlog… Well well. Let’s just hope they improve on CSS 2.1 for IE7…

  2. CSS3 was released in modules so that the spec would be completed progressionally, meaning that browser vendors could start implementing parts of the spec earlier. Microsoft has shown no commitment to implementing the parts of the spec that are ready for implementation now, such as CSS3 selectors.

    And all they’re doing as far as IE7 goes (according to them, anyway), is ironing out a few CSS bugs, with no new compliance except alpha transparency in PNGs, a feature they should have implemented ages ago anyway.

  3. Yeah, MS are going to support CSS3 when they’re done.

    It’s about as likely as Christ being sent here to rescue us from our sins, with a second coming Real Soon Now.

  4. What is up with that link to MSDN! I’ve seen novices write better ones. Someone really needs a talking to for that one (and then having the courage to post it on a blog!). I have a feeling that the IE devs really don’t know a thing about any web development that doesn’t end with .NET.

  5. As I commented there, the “difficult to read” part is simply because a <div/> has no associated semantic meaning with respect to layout – you have to map it to some created rendering you’ve constructed specifically for the situation. Tables, on the other hand, have a great deal of semantic meaning in terms of what sort of layout they’ll generate. (Note that this is different semantic meaning from the kind usually discussed in these circles, where “semantic” usually refers to the meaning derived from the tabular data contained in a table.)

  6. My first comment there was removed, I guess “if the IE developers don’t understand this, then this browser has no future” was too offensive :)
    But that post definitely shows what to expect from IE7. The developers have completely lost contact to reality despite all blogs. They are still in the previous century with their understanding of web design. One can’t expect these people to embrace new standards, they don’t understand them.

    PS: Before somebody objects: the blog post only tells something about one developer, but the fact that this article could be published on MSDN in March 2005 – that is a diagnosis for the team as a whole.