Cascading Style Sheets Turn 10
The World Wide Web Consortium is celebrating the tenth birthday of Cascading Style Sheets. The good old CSS Level 1 spec was officially published on December 17th 1996. Why I remember when they were just a wee little thing, still in diapers…
The W3C is really isn’t being hyperbolic when they say style sheets have “changed the face of the web.” We’ve come a long way from those dark days of Angelfire-hosted tables-based layouts and that progress is in no small part a result of CSS.
By embracing the age-old programming concept of separating content from display, style sheets have allowed designers and amateurs alike to create the fancy and often truly beautiful web that we enjoy today.
To celebrate the tenth anniversary of CSS, the W3C has launched an improved validation service for web programmers who want to test their designs for CSS standards compliance. The W3C is also inviting developers to submit their favorite CSS designs which will be integrated into the CSS 10 Gallery.
And the future of CSS looks good as well, browser support for CSS3 is already beginning to appear. Apple’s Safari browser already supports several aspects of the new spec and other browsers are beginning to as well.
CSS3 is still in development, but it promises even more features and, at the same time, it makes implementation easier. CSS3 includes all of CSS2 and adds new selectors, more powerful borders and backgrounds, vertical text, speech and more.
And for those that think CSS isn’t helpful, consider this: it got me this job. Somewhere around 1998 I was trying to make one of those awful Angelfire “homepages” and in course of searching to understand just what the hell CSS was for, I ran across a then-Wired-owned tutorial site named Webmonkey. Just hit the fast-forward button and here we are. Thanks CSS.
So happy birthday CSS. I don’t like to think about where the web would be without style sheets, it’s not a pleasant thought.
