Experimental CSS and old fashioned browsers

Question

Is it a good idea to use experimental CSS-properties like border-radius, text-shadow, box-shadow and gradient in a layout today? And what about values like rgba()?

When I look at web galleries, these CSS-properties are frequently used and according to articles like on 24ways.org it is not a problem to use these properties.

What is your opinion?

Answer 1

I would say it's a decidedly bad idea to depend on those properties right now. You can use them, but they won't work in many browsers.

Off the top of my head: border-radius, text-shadow and box-shadow and rgba won't work in IE at all. Source for rgba, official IE compatibility table for all CSS properties

Since IE still holds a remarkable share in the browser market, it would be foolish to ignore it.

The nice thing about all those effects is that it is still possible to create a site that looks great with them, and still decent without them. The only exception to that may be rgba depending on the context you use it in.