Introduction to CSS3
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Abstract
The members of the CSS&FP Working Group have decided to modularize the
CSS specification. This modularization will help to clarify the relationships
between the different parts of the specification, and reduce the size of the
complete document. It will also allow us to build specific tests on a per
module basis and will help implementors in deciding which portions of CSS to
support. Furthermore, the modular nature of the specification will make it
possible for individual modules to be updated as needed, thus allowing for a
more flexible and timely evolution of the specification as a whole.
This document lists all the modules to be contained in the future CSS3
specification.
Status of this document
This is an official introduction, issued by the CSS Working Group, which
details the modularization of the CSS3 specification and the CSS test suite.
This document should be considered to be informative, not normative. See the
Style overview pages for more information on W3C’s work
on style sheets, including CSS.
This is a public W3C Working Draft for review by W3C members and other
interested parties. As a draft document, it may be updated, replaced, or
obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use W3C
Working Drafts as reference material or to cite them as other than “work in
progress.”
A list of current W3C Recommendations and other technical documents
including Working Drafts and Notes can be found at http://www.w3.org/TR.
Please send comments to the
www-style@w3.org mailing list (see how to
subscribe) or to the editor.
Table of contents
1. Why Modules?
As the popularity of CSS grows, so does interest in making additions to
the specification. Rather than attempting to shove dozens of updates into a
single monolithic specification, it will be much easier and more efficient to
be able to update individual pieces of the specification. Modules will enable
CSS to be updated in a more timely and precise fashion, thus allowing for a
more flexible and timely evolution of the specification as a whole.
For resource constrained devices, it may be impractical to support all of
CSS. For example, an aural browser may be concerned only with aural styles,
whereas a visual browser may care nothing for aural styles. In such cases, a
user agent may implement a subset of CSS. Subsets of CSS are limited to
combining selected CSS modules, and once a module has been chosen, all of its
features must be supported.
2. Module Overview
All modules contain a “Conformance: Requirements and Recommendations”
section. Any module whose table row is backed with green is considered part
of the “CSS Core.” The listed deadlines (backed in red) represent the time at
which a module should be ready for Working Draft publication. There are also
columns which indicate a module’s participation in each of three “profiles”:
HTML Basic, CSS3, and SVG. A module without any indicated module
participation is at risk of being dropped from CSS3 before it reaches
Proposed Recommendation status. A module without a listed editor is backed in
yellow, and is in serious danger of being dropped.
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| Syntax / grammar / etc. |
|
X |
X |
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– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
| Selectors |
Tantek Çelik, Daniel Glazman, Ian Hickson |
X |
X |
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5 Oct 2000 |
– |
26 Jan 2001 |
1 Mar 2001 |
– |
– |
– |
| Values, Units |
Håkon Lie, Chris Lilley |
X |
X |
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– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
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| Value assignment / cascade / inheritance |
Håkon Lie |
X |
X |
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– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
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| Box model / vertical |
Bert Bos |
X |
X |
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– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
| Positioning |
Bert Bos |
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X |
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– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
| Color / gamma / color profiles |
Tantek Çelik, Chris Lilley |
X |
X |
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22 Jun 1999 |
5 Mar 2001 |
– |
– |
– |
– |
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| Background |
Tim Boland |
X |
X |
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– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
| Line box model |
Eric Meyer |
X |
X |
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– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
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| Text / bidi / vertical alignment |
Chris Lilley, Michel Suignard |
X |
X |
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17 May 2001 |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
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| Ruby |
Michel Suignard |
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X |
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16 Feb 2001 |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
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| Font properties |
Chris Lilley, Michel Suignard |
X |
X |
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– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
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| WebFonts |
Chris Lilley |
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X |
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– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
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| Generated content / markers |
Håkon Lie |
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X |
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– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
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| Replaced content |
Eric Meyer |
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X |
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– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
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| Paged media |
Steve Zilles |
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X |
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28 Sep 1999 |
– |
– |
– |
– |
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| User interface |
Tantek Çelik |
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X |
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16 Sep 1999 |
16 Feb 2000 |
– |
– |
– |
– |
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| Tables |
Bert Bos |
X |
X |
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– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
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| Columns |
Håkon Lie |
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X |
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22 Jun 1999 |
18 Jan 2001 |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
| SVG |
Chris Lilley |
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X |
X |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
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| Math |
Angel Diaz |
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– |
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| BECSS |
Michel Suignard |
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4 Aug 1999 |
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| ACSS |
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– |
– |
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– |
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| Media queries |
Håkon W. Lie |
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X |
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4 Apr
2001 |
17 May
2001 |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
| SMIL |
Debbie Newman |
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– |
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| Test Suite |
Eric Meyer |
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X |
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– |
3. Module Descriptions and Related
Information
3.1. Introduction
This provides a general overview of the specification’s goals, as well as
basic notes on how CSS works, acknowledgments, and so forth.
- 1. About the CSS2 Specification
- 2. Introduction to CSS2
3.2. Syntax / grammar
A way to attach arbitrary properties to a hierarchically structured
document or other data structure, with the characteristic that it has
built-in “forward-compatibility” (a.k.a. “extensibility”).
Describes the selectors of CSS3. Selectors are used to select elements in
an HTML or XML document, in order to attach (style) properties to them. The
draft includes the selectors of CSS1 and CSS2 and extends them with new
proposals that allow, for example, elements to be selected based on whether
they contain a certain word, or whether they are the only element of their
kind.
3.4. Values & units
Things which are applied to values.
3.5. Value assignment / cascade /
inheritance
How properties interact, and the core of how CSS operates.
3.6. Box model / vertical
The box model describes the basics of the normal text flow, including how
to “float” blocks of text or images, but excluding columns, tables, and other
advanced layouts; i.e., it describes how text and other objects are strung
into lines, and lines into blocks (paragraphs), and how those blocks are put
below each other or side by side with the help of margins and borders. It
treats both horizontal text and vertical writing modes.
3.7. Positioning
This describes the process of placing an element someplace other than it
would normally be in the normal flow of the document.
In general, basic color descriptions and color handling in multiple
environments. The color profiles section describes how two properties can be
attached to embedded images to specify their “color space,” which is the
information a renderer needs to paint the right color for each pixel. It
should do away with the annoying problem that images, especially GIF and
JPEG, but sometimes also PNG, look different on a Mac than on a PC, or other
platforms.
3.9. Colors and Backgrounds
A description of how element foregrounds and backgrounds are formatted.
3.10. Line box model
A description of the line box model for inline elements, and the inline
content of block elements.
3.11. Text
Description of the handling of text in user agents. Includes bidi,
vertical alignment, text decoration, line breaking, etc.
3.12. Fonts
Description of the handling of fonts in user agents.
A draft that contains proposals for new style properties for typographic
traditions that have so far had little attention in CSS, such as vertical
Japanese and Arabic. The CSS working group is cooperating with W3C’s
Internationalization working group on this.
- The Internationalization CSS WD
3.14. Generated content /
markers
A description of how content is generated and markers are displayed.
3.15. Replaced content
A module explaining how replaced content is handled and what qualifies as
replaced content.
Extends the properties that CSS2 already had with new ones to control such
things as running headers and footers, page numbers and print-style
cross-references (“see page…”).
- 13. Paged media
- The CSS3 Page WD
- Running headers and footers
- Cross-references
- Float : gutter-side/fore-edge-side
- Floating boxes to top/bottom of page
Contains features for styling some interactive, dynamic aspects of Web
pages: the look of form elements in their various states, more cursors and
colors to describe GUIs (graphical user interfaces) that blend well with the
user’s desktop environment, and a proposal for “kiosk” mode.
3.18. WebFonts
Authors continue to clamor for “more control” over their pages, and the
fonts used in presenting them. This module will attempt to provide a way to
make fonts more Web-friendly.
3.19. ACSS
An attempt to make styled content even more accessible.
3.20. SMIL
An attempt to link CSS and SMIL together.
3.21. Tables
The tables module contains the properties to lay out boxes in rows and
columns. It allows a designer to assign roles like “table,” “cell,” “row,” or
“caption” to boxes and provides for various alignments and border styles.
Proposes new properties to create flexible column layouts.
A format that expresses shapes (lines, circles, splines, etc.) in an
XML-based language and their style (fill color, stroke width, etc.) in CSS.
This should make it easy to create text and graphics in the same style simply
by using a single style sheet for both. SVG uses several existing CSS
properties, but also introduces new ones that may or may not be useful for
styling text. It will progress to Recommendation as a separate specification,
but the (new) CSS properties are coordinated with the CSS working group.
3.24. Math
An attempt to provide style properties for mathematical expressions. This
will obviously be deeply linked to the MathML specification.
A proposal to use the CSS syntax and CSS’s system of cascading and
inheritance to attach “behavior” (rather than style) to elements. Behavior in
this context refers to any dynamic changes to the style or the document in
response to user events, such as clicks and key presses. The behaviors
themselves are expressed as pieces of script, in languages such as
ECMAscript.
To describe in more detail what type of devices a style sheet applies to,
this document proposes media queries. A media query consists of a media type
and one or more expressions to limit the scope of a certain style sheet.
Among the proposed media features that can be used in expressions are
“width”, “height” (size of the display), and “color” (color depth of the
display).
3.27. Test Suite
Providing implementation guidelines, concrete examples, and user insight
into implementation support, a test suite is crucial to the success of any
specification. Although the Test Suite is a module in itself and has a module
owner, individual module owners are responsible for assisting in the creation
and review of tests for their specific module.
4. Appendices
Some appendices will be split up to go with individual modules. These are:
- Appendix B. Changes from CSS1
- Appendix E. References
- Appendix F. Property index
For example, the changes between one version of a module and another
should be tracked in an appendix to that module, not a single appendix to the
entire specification. Similarly, there should be a property reference for
each module. There may be a single cumulative reference for the entire
specification, although this is not yet known with any certainty. Each module
should also include an appendix listing any dependencies on other modules or
specifications.
There will also be a few specification-wide appendices. There are
projected to be:
- Appendix A. A sample style sheet for HTML 4.0
- Appendix H. Index
5. Module template
All modules should conform to the format defined in the CSS3 editing
rules [member-only link]. In addition to the definitions of properties
and values, each module contains a list of dependencies on other modules or
specifications, and also provides a list of changes from CSS2.
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