Today I updated XulRunner to version 1.9.1 (with accompanying updates to Epiphany 2.26.3 and Firefox 3.5), and made a little experiment which I do everytime a web browser get updated: surf to css3.info and check whether some CSS3 cool stuff which was previously unsupported works with the latest release.

This update brought in the following improvements:

• Text and box shadows, to make the browser generate more bling with less tricks.
• HSL and HSLA color spaces, essential for conveniently creating shades of the same colour, by changing the saturation and/or lightness.
• Some new background positioning options.
• Multicolumn layout. I still do not have a clear idea if I would like use this in a web design, but I feel like it will be superb for generating printed media.
• At last: TrueType fonts loaded from the web!
• Other minor niceties :-D

I find very appealing that browsers are finally getting some of this implemented, especially drop shadows and fonts loaded from the web, as they allow designers for crafting very interesting designs while keeping sites accessible. Especially with web fonts: it will be no longer necessary to pre-generate titles and the like as bitmaps or generating them server-side. Something as simple as a good font design can turn a boring website into something beautiful, so this having feature (for now in Safari/WebKit and Firefox/Gecko) is absolutely thrilling.

Good times for web design are coming… ;-)