For those of us who no longer want to support Microsoft’s lagging browsers the best (and fastest) way to create rounded corners is by using CSS3. Using CSS corners will dramatically reduce your development time while keeping your markup clean and flexible.

As it stands, rounded corners are currently supported in modern versions of Firefox, Safari, and Chrome. Unfortunately, you’ll need to use two different declarations to get all these browsers working. The basic declarations should look something like this:

/* Supported in Firefox */
-moz-border-radius
-moz-border-radius-topleft
-moz-border-radius-topright
-moz-border-radius-bottomleft
-moz-border-radius-bottomright

/* Supported in Chrome and Safari */
-webkit-border-radius
-webkit-border-top-left-radius
-webkit-border-top-right-radius
-webkit-border-bottom-left-radius
-webkit-border-bottom-right-radius

The Rounded Example

Below you will find an example of rounded corners in action. If you’re using a modern browser you should see the grey box with rounded corners. (if using IE, I’ve put in a screenshot of what things look like when using a respectable browser)

.rounded {
width: 500px;
padding: 30px 0px;
-moz-border-radius: 10px;
-webkit-border-radius: 10px;
border-radius: 10px;
}

Screenshot Example For Internet Explorer (sigh…)

But What Does the W3C Say?

Due to the fact that border-radius is not officially supported by any browser, it might be a good idea to check out what the W3C has to say about the subject. I was surprised to see how detailed they were and I highly recommend checking out their official specs. As a reference, the official (but currently unsupported) declarations are:

border-radius
border-top-right-radius
border-bottom-right-radius
border-bottom-left-radius
border-top-left-radius

There are tons of neat variations you can do, but they go a little beyond the scope of this article. Check out the W3C specs for the full explanation, or, check out some of these links that do a good job documenting css rounded corners:

• CSS3 Info
• The Art of Web
• Zen Elements