What 3D property are you speaking of? Maybe you're meaning that using a 2 dimensional transition corresponds to a 3D property that causes the hardware to kick in then I suppose you make sense. But the thing is, I fail to see how that's a "trick" when it's an implemented feature of CSS. Also, if a browser vendor turns off the feature then that's a problem of the vendor and not CSS. Again, you are labeling a feature as a "trick" to paint a negative picture of web apps. Believe me, there's plenty of room for improvement in the area of web apps but your example isn't holding up.
I wasn't speaking of playing videos to the screen. I was referring to the hardware in the device that renders pixels to the display, specifically the hardware accelerated part. That's the PC gamer side of me referring to that hardware as video cards or video hardware.
But to combine your Safari and Cocoa examples. If Safari says that it doesn't have hardware accelerated CSS features enabled then you know that the feature doesn't work as nicely as you would want, but the transition will still happen. If Safari says that it is enabled... nah, never mind. Regardless of hardware support or not; you, as the person using CSS, never have to worry about any implementation details. In fact, since CSS isn't a framework, it's far more efficient to use CSS over a Javascript framework anyway, regardless of hardware support.
I wasn't speaking of playing videos to the screen. I was referring to the hardware in the device that renders pixels to the display, specifically the hardware accelerated part. That's the PC gamer side of me referring to that hardware as video cards or video hardware.
But to combine your Safari and Cocoa examples. If Safari says that it doesn't have hardware accelerated CSS features enabled then you know that the feature doesn't work as nicely as you would want, but the transition will still happen. If Safari says that it is enabled... nah, never mind. Regardless of hardware support or not; you, as the person using CSS, never have to worry about any implementation details. In fact, since CSS isn't a framework, it's far more efficient to use CSS over a Javascript framework anyway, regardless of hardware support.