The web continually evolves—not only do new websites appear (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter), but also the fundamental technologies used to build websites changes and grows. Web designers used to use HTML tables to lay out pages; now we use CSS. The web design world today is abuzz with the next incarnation of the CSS standard: CSS3. CSS3 promises to add amazing new design effects to websites, such as drop shadows for text or page elements, animated effects, rounded corners on images, gradient backgrounds, and more (a list of the most popular CSS3 properties can be found on Code Hinting).

However, there are drawbacks to CSS3. First, it’s still a work in progress; unlike CSS 2.1, CSS3 is not a complete standard and the W3C is still hammering out the list of CSS3 properties and how they work. Because of this, browser support for CSS3 varies significantly. Internet Explorer 6 was created long before CSS3, and even Internet Explorer 9 doesn’t understand many aspects of it. Other properties proposed in CSS3 can’t be found in any web browser. In addition, to get some CSS3 properties to work in the web browsers that do support them, you have to use special “browser vendor prefixes.” For example, the box-shadow property adds a drop shadow to an element (like a ....