If you’re an application developer, you face quite a dilemma. You must somehow build applications that are functional, attractive, and work across all browsers.

The problem is, while CSS3 brings some great new styles that can improve nearly any application, it’s not supported by every browser. What does that mean? It means your applications may look great in some browsers, but awful in other browsers.

What can you do about this problem? You can ignore the newer styles until the use of older browsers declines, but that probably won’t happen for years. Besides, this leaves you with ugly and outdated applications, which I know you don’t want.

That being said, there are some ways to get around the issue. Certain javascript libraries claim to fix this problem, but not all of them are simple, and not all of them work as advertised. How do you know which one to use? We recently tested one such library, CSS3 PIE, which claims to bring CSS3 to older Internet Explorer browsers. If it works as advertised, it would let you use CSS3 in your current applications while avoiding the majority of the browser differences!

How well does it work? We tested it and wrote up our findings, which you can read in this tutorial.