CSS3 vs CSS 2 - Columns in Text

[Tina]

I know in CSS 3, they are coming out with a column feature, but for everything below 3, does everyone make 3 columns in their paragraph text using a fixed width/height and floats?

is there a way to use CSS3 & CSS2 so that one trumps the other if the browser is capable of?

[Ryan]

I use fixed width divs without the height usually. I haven't looked at the css3 stuff, so I am hoping that you can define both in your rule, if css3 can be seen, do it, or else ignore it. Just like the -moz rules.

[Curtiss Grymala]

I haven't played with CSS3 an extreme amount, but I would imagine that that sort of thing is going to require a workaround. For instance, to implement CSS2 definitions with CSS 1 fallbacks (for things like IE6), I generally end up using CSS1 style definitions as the default, then override those definitions with specific selectors that were introduced with CSS2.

I don't know for sure, but I would imagine a similar method will need to be used if you don't agree with the browser's default fallback for unsupported style definitions when you begin using CSS3.

Still, it would be nice if there was some way to conditionally define something in CSS3 and fallback to a different configuration for CSS2.

[Chad Hietala]

This can be accomplished by setting divs to display as tables and table cells. Very interesting approach and is supported in a lot of browser except IE (of course).

Here is a tutorial and better explanation:

http://net.tutsplus.com/videos/screencasts/everything-you-know-is-w...

[Stuart Elliot]

late reply I know(!)

you could do it by targetting IE with conditional stylesheets you could do this (or by filters as mentioned below)

for example target ie6/7 with css2 then ie8 with css3 - use the main stylesheet to cover firefox/chrome etc (which can handle css3).

but at the end of the day there is no real benefit to doing this - if your site is displayed by one user with a css2 layout and to another with a css3 layout - what's the difference? (from a user perspective). Both instances of the page (ought..) look the same - so to be honest you are just making work for yourself.

For the next year or two (at least) we realistically are stuck with css2 due to user browser restrictions. Shame because it's nice simple code :)

[Steven Farthing]

I would suggest a Test-Driven approach as described in this article, http://www.alistapart.com/articles/testdriven/ . Upon loading the page have a series of JavaScript tests will test the capabilities of the browser and load a corresponding style sheet. In this way one can use new CSS 3 techniques and wait for the browsers to catch up which at the same time degrade softly for older browsers. The onyl catch is JavaScript must be enabled to run these tests.