I don’t feel that rgba is really a very practical solution just yet.. since IE doesn’t support it. As web developers we have to support all the major browsers while being as efficient as possible. This means we have to support IE7 and 8 whether we want to or not. While you can get away with CSS3 rounded corners and fallback on standard square corners in IE, the use of transparency is often important to the aesthetics of the site/design and a fallback solution to standard RGB is not a practical solution in that case. PLUS, unless you specify the PNG image in an IE conditional-based stylesheet, your making ONE MORE http request for a png image for each transparency which is bloat that shouldn’t be there.

Overall.. i think this is a promising future, but premature to getting excited about just yet. Unless you really want to take the time to write out IE conditional styles, i think it’s better to put this one on that backburner for a while.

With that said, I still greatly appreciate the article and agree with the others, that it’s awesome to have you back!