Is it worth developing in HTML5 and CSS3 now?

I am beginning to start developing websites in HTML5 and CSS3 but I am noticing it is looking very bad in IE8 which I still use.

I am using things like <section>, drop shadows, etc. and also implementing them in my Wordpress websites.

Is it too early to do this?

Am I developing websites wrong, should I add some sort of conditions for certain browsers. I have never added conditions, so can someone give me a quick guide to doing it if I need to do this. : (

Thank you

Unless there is a specific must-have feature in HTML5 and/or CSS3, I think working with HTML4 and CSS2 is better at this moment.

I heard that html 5 is more flexible. They don't need serial tags. Any portion of a pages tag could be written in anywhere in the editor with an indication. I heard SEO'S saying it is search engine friendly.

I am all for CSS3 but still use xhtml 1.0. It just depends on what you really need. For me I use css3 to make shadows and rounded corners mostly. I do not add conditions to these as it adds alot of overhead for little result. Users of older browsers is slowly diminishing so the ones that are still using browsers that do not understand css3, I am fine with them just getting the square versions of my divs and things like that.

One thing to remember is that HTML 5 is still a long way from becoming a standard and so everything is still subject to change and may be completely different by the time it does become a standard (a prior example of this happening is the box model in CSS 2 that was implemented by IE5 while it was still an early draft and then changed completely by the time the standard was finished - leading to IE having to implement quirks mode in IE6 to cater for sites that used the draft box model instead of the standard one).

The current HTML 5 draft still contains lots of unnecessary tags and attributes that will probably be dropped or changed before it becomes a standard (for example the required attribute on input fields is made obsolete by the pattern attribute and so obviously it makes no sense to actually implement both as that would allow required pattern="^$" which specifies that the field is invalid regardless of whether you enter anything in it or not).

Some parts of CSS 3 have been finished and other parts are very close and so those parts of CSS 3 can be safely used without much risk of them changing in the future.

It wouldn't make sense to roll the site out HTML5 & CSS3 if one of the requirements is browser support of IE8 or below.

However, there are a few tools out there (modernizr.js rocks) in the form of javascript frameworks that allow you to sniff for HTML5/CSS3 browser support/capabilities. This would allow you to incorporate css3 where you really wanted it while degrading gracefully for older browsers. This is still heavily limited to aesthetic tweaks though and not meant to use where your really leveraging some of the robust features of HTML5.

Yeap, using html5 and css3 in website development is definitely worth it. Try integrating html5boilerplate in your website, it will work perfectly on ie8 as well. Boilerplate usually solves all compatibility issues in most browsers.