This article was written in 2015. It might or it might not be outdated. And it could be that the layout breaks. If that’s the case please let me know.

Now that we have it…

Years ago every element on every website had rounded corners and drop shadows. Which was pretty hard to do, because back then browser didn’t support border-radius or box-shadow. We had to use hacks. A weird thing happened when border-radius and box-shadow were widely implemented though: webdesign became flat. No more rounded corners, no more shadows. It’s as if there was a secret meeting where people unanimously decided that, now that we have it, we don’t want it.

There’s another feature that many Photoshop designers have been using for ages. There’s this weird, almost random setting, that defines how the transparency of layers should work. Every now and then I used to get a psd template with a multiply blend-mode in it. Wonderful stuff, but back then it was really impossible to recreate the same effect in browsers. Even with hacks.

But now we can use it. And you should. I just hope that in the next secret design meeting everybody will agree that now that we have it, we’ll use it. Wisely.