Moving On with HTML5 & CSS3
With the design of this blog rolling out nearly four years ago, much of the way I’ve built mccrindle.com is getting a little long in the tooth. So–I’ve decided that before I unleash my new HTML5/CSS3 skills on unsuspecting corporate clients and NGOs, I’m going to test it on myself.
I’ve decided, however, that since this is a personal piece of Web property, I’m going to really go for it and redesign mccrindle.com as a legacy-free WordPress theme.
Legacy-free you ask? Well, I mean that I’m simply not going to worry about trying to support browsers that were built 10 years ago (I’m looking at you, IE6). I’m really going to put rubber to the road and see what is possible in terms of design.
After speaking with one of the actual people working on the IE9 development team, I’ve realized that we need to let go of bridge technologies like endless <div> tags with a myriad of ids and classes, background images that emulate things like rounded corners, PNG-transparency-fix scripts for feeble browsers… need I go on?
IE9 promises to be a powerful rendering platform for current technologies like HTML5 and CSS3–and if Microsoft is serious about these things, then it is truly time to move forward. After all, they’d like to see the end of IE6 just as much as any Web designer.
So I’m going to attempt to move most of the content (minus the really dusty old stuff) here at mccrindle.com and roll out a fresh WordPress them in parallel with the existing site so that the two designs can be compared.
I will attempt to retain the spirit of the original design, while removing some of the crutches and compromises that needed to be made at the time due to the browser technology that existed in 2006.
Once that is done, I will then move to mobile. I have the strangest feeling that I’m not going to be getting a lot of sleep over the next few months. Hmm. Stay tuned.