Getting Fancy - Jump Start CSS - page 157

If using any of these techniques, remember to test the pages without these features present,
to ensure everything looks acceptable. This is a concept referred to as graceful degradation ,
meaning that the page will degrade gracefully, or without major problems, even if certain fea-
tures don't work.
Another word of warning: many of these techniques, if used too liberally, can cause web
pages to become slow and sluggish. For example, it may not be a good choice to layer mul-
tiple gradients on a web page's background. Similarly, too many animations can not only an-
noy users, but may also make your page slower than usual.
So use these techniques sparingly, and don't be afraid to resort to images if a CSS technique
is causing the page to become too slow.
Other Cutting-edge Features
Since this is a short book, we can't possibly include every fancy new CSS technique, so we
chose only the ones that have good browser support and that might be most practical.
Some other features that are worth looking into include:
• multiple columns
• values defined using calc()
• 3D transforms
• CSS filters
• CSS variables
You can get a basic overview and links to many new CSS features by checking out this page
at Can I use... or CSS3 Click Chart.
Making RecipeFinder Responsive
In Chapter 2 , we touched on the concept of Responsive Web Design (RWD), and the use of
media queries to achieve it. To close out this chapter, we're going to add some media queries