W3C Rings-in 10 Years of Style, Launches CSS Gallery

By Brice Dunwoodie | Published Dec 19, 2006

W3C CSS 10 Its hard to believe, but it was 10 years ago, on the 17th of December 1996, that the W3C published the first standard for style on the Web: Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), level 1.

To celebrate this tenth anniversary, W3C is inviting world wide web developers to submit their most prodigious CSS designs to the CSS10 Gallery.

“The design community has confirmed that using CSS promotes beauty while making it easier and less expensive to build sites, ” said Bert Bos, W3C Style Activity Lead and one of the original co-authors of the specification that became CSS level 1.

Bert Bos and Håkon Lie, the other original co-author of CSS, will be judging and selecting designs for the CSS10 Gallery. Their criteria will be originality, utility, and aesthetics.

Ambitious web standards wonks who want to gain some weighty press can submit their work from now through December 2007. Submissions should be added to the gallery on a monthly basis and can be send via email to: css10 [at] w3 [dot] org.

CSS has various levels and profiles. In general, desktop browsers implement level 1, 2 or 3. Other programs implement the appropriate profile for their platform, whether mobile phone, PDA, television, printer, speech synthesizer, or other device.

CSS level 1 defines properties for fonts, margins, colors, and other tools for style that are common to nearly all profiles of CSS. An early example of CSS use is the original CSS gallery (written when Microsoft's Internet Explorer 3 first added CSS support). W3C has compiled additional CSS history as part of this celebration.

CSS level 2 revision 1 (“CSS 2.1”) includes all of CSS level 1 and adds absolutely positioned elements, automatic numbering, page breaks, right to left text and other features.

CSS level 3 (“CSS3”), still in development, promises more power features at the same time it will make CSS easier to implement and use. CSS3 includes all of level 2 and adds new selectors, rich hypertext, more powerful borders and backgrounds, vertical text, user interaction (e.g., styling of XForms), speech, rendering on multimedia devices, and more.

Those curious about CSS3 developments and directions can tune into the CSS Working Group for ongoing details.