What stood out to me in this chapter is the breakdown of critical and non-critical aspects of a website. It allowed me to see the reasoning behind using CSS3 now and why we can use it today, as the author points out. Dividing up a website into its most important parts also helps me think about what comes first when creating a web design. As we start the process for our final project, it’s good to keep in mind the essentials: branding, usability, accessibility and layout. We can sometimes get caught up in the fancy CSS3 details to make our websites look interesting and increase their interactivity, but to begin our Wild Cat project, we have to take a step back. We have to look at the structure and the usability of our website. We have to keep in mind our users.
With that being said, that’s why I liked how the author included the section “when to use CSS3.” Because we use CSS3 to enhance the non-critical parts of a website (interaction, movement, visual rewards) for the most part, we can think about how to make small additions to our websites with CSS3. Sometimes it’s easy to get lost in the accessories or in the cool animations. Sometimes we have to remember to have reasoning behind using CSS3–keeping in mind a visual or interactive purpose.