CSS Turns 10 Years Old

An anonymous reader writes "Cascading Style Sheets celebrate their tenth anniversary this week. The W3C put together the CSS10 site in recognition of this milestone with a Hall of Fame, essays from the past decade, a gallery, and more." I was glad to see the CSS Zen Garden selected for the Hall of Fame, and disappointed (but not surprised) that no browser on my computer correctly renders the Acid2 test.

ACID2 Compliance

[AKAImBatman]

"[I was] disappointed (but not surprised) that no browser on my computer correctly renders the Acid2 test."

Time to get a new computer [apple.com].

Here's a list [wikipedia.org] of ACID2 compliant browsers. It's longer than one might think.

Re:ACID2 Compliance

[Kelson]

Time to get a new computer.

Heck, chances are Opera [opera.com] will run on his current computer.

Isn't it interesting, though, that most of the Acid2-compliant browsers are either Mac or Unix-based? I suppose that has to do with the fact that most Windows-only browsers just embed the IE rendering engine, and most cross-platform browsers use Gecko (here's to Gecko 1.9 passing Acid2 when it's finished!). That basically leaves KHTML and Webkit, which are firmly entrenched in *nix and MacOS respectively, and a couple of independent engines: Opera (cross-platform) and iCab (Mac).

Re:

[Kelson]

Aside from KDE ports to other platforms, khtml can be used standalone on Windows, SkyOS, and AmigaOS (amongst others).

Can be, yes -- there's even a Windows KHTML browser in early alpha stages called Swift -- but practically speaking, most KHTML browsers today are running on *nix platforms, and most Webkit browsers are on Mac OS X. Yes, you can run a non-Webkti KHTML browser on Mac OS X, but Webkit is available right there. And IIRC someone ported Webkit to GTK to run it on cell phones (Nokia?), but for

Re:ACID2 Compliance

[catbutt]

Although you could start using Safari, I have found a better compromise.

I use Firefox for day to day browsing. But every so often, when I find the need to view the sublime smiley face image in all its glory, I fire up Safari for just that. It serves my needs, since I really only need to see the smily image maybe once a day or so.

Re:ACID2 Compliance

[CastrTroy]

This outlines the problem. Safari has been "Fixed" so that the acid2 test renders correctly, yet still contains lots of rendering bugs. I would have to say as a web developer that I run into many more rendering bugs on Safari than I do on Firefox (although IE is the worst). I can probably code a browser that correctly renders the acid 2 test in 3 days. It won't render any other pages properly, but it will render the acid2 test.

Re:ACID2 Compliance

[egomaniac]

Hell, I can create a web browser that will render Acid2 correctly in five minutes.

Step 1: Retrieve Acid2 HTML
Step 2: Completely ignore it and display a screen shot of the correct rendering

Re:

[gringer]

Step 2: Completely ignore it and display a screen shot of the correct rendering

Not quite, the nose needs to light up blue when you hover over it with the mouse cursor.

Re:

[Drooling Iguana]

Flash.

Re:

[Andrew Kismet]

Nice try, but would the nose of your render turn blue when rolled over? :P
Opera got cheeky and did something similar, albeit after passing: http://files.myopera.com/chuanz/files/acid2.png [myopera.com]

Re:

[Overly Critical Guy]

Ah, the NVidia method of display optimization.

Re:ACID2 Compliance

[Kelson]

Safari has been "Fixed" so that the acid2 test renders correctly, yet still contains lots of rendering bugs.

This nicely demonstrates the fact that Acid2 is not a CSS compliance test (something which I've seen claimed in many discussions). If Opera 9 and Safari 2 can both pass Acid2, but Opera 9 has broader and/or less buggy CSS support, then Acid2 cannot tell you the overall level of compliance.

It's important to remember what Acid2 is: namely, a wish list for web developers. It's a bunch of features that developers would like to use, but which had (until recently) limited, buggy, or just plain no support in major browsers. The prestige of passing Acid2 (and, conversely, the shame of not passing it) was supposed to motivate browser developers to essentially fill in the corners of their CSS support, making it feasible for web developers to start using more of their toolboxes.

It's taken time, but it's succeeded, with one notable "we don't care, we don't have to" exception: Internet Explorer. Of the four major engines, KHTML and Opera have it, and Gecko is getting it soon. And the biggest player on the block seems to be doing its best to prevent us from actually using our tools if we want the majority of web surfers to see our sites as designed.

Re:

[CastrTroy]

Firefox doesn't pass the Acid2 test because they haven't made it a priority to pass the test. They realize that CSS support is important, but they also realize that there's a lot of other things that go into making a good browser. To me it doesn't matter if Firefox passes the Acid2 test. What I care about is real world performance. And in the real world, Firefox gets CSS rendering right more often than Safari or Opera. There's a reason why Safari passes the Acid2 test while konquerer, which uses the sa

Re:

[uhlume]

real Mac user: someone true to who they are, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules and they have no respect for the status quo. The ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world.

And apparently, if you're at all representative, the ones with no sense of irony...

Good but not all there yet.

[MikeFM]

Do any browsers really do CSS right? Firefox is missing drop shadows and IE7, Safari, and Opera still don't center content correctly all the time. Still things are a lot better than with older browsers such as IE6.

I wish the standards would be realistic and just realize that no browser is ever going to be 100% perfect in how it renders a page and that in some cases the standard isn't going to be perfect either. I hate to praise IE but IE has a way to only load certains stylesheets for IE or even certain ver

Re:

[Kelson]

Heck, I like to switch stylesheets based on window size even so why not make that possible also without resorting to Javascript

You mentioned CSS3, so you may be aware of this already, but CSS media queries [virtuelvis.com] will eventually do this. AFAIK, Opera is still the only browser with even experimental support for them, though.

Re:

[Bogtha]

I hate to praise IE but IE has a way to only load certains stylesheets for IE or even certain versions of IE. It'd be nice to see that built into the standard so it'd be easier to make minor tweaks for individual cases.

Delivering differentiated content to work around buggy user-agents is a function of the transport protocol, not something you want to replicate for each and every file format delivered over that protocol. It is built into the standard - the right standard for this, HTTP. I quote from

Re:

[jdb8167]

Safari doesn't render Acid2 correctly if you have the Flash plug-in turned off.

Re:

[Grey Ninja]

I just tried the ACID2 test on my computer again after you said that. It would seem that the new Mozilla finally renders it flawlessly. I've previously tried it in Konqueror and Opera, and it displays fine there as well.

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9a2pre) Gecko/20061219 Minefield/3.0a2pre

Re:

[AKAImBatman]

The browsers I tried are Safari 2.0.4 and Firefox 1.5.0.8 -- both of which did pretty well, but not letter-perfect

You might want to recheck that. I personally ran Safari 2.0.4 through the ACID2 test before posting. It's fully compliant*. If you're seeing anything other than the exact same image shown by the ACID2 reference, then there's a problem with your Safari install.

* The nose even lights up! Whee!

Re:

[Millenniumman]

Safari passes since 2.02 . It was the first to do so, in fact.

10 years old...

[Kelson]

...and we're still waiting for a complete CSS2 implementation. Though to be fair, CSS2 is only 8.5 years old, and has been undergone a couple of minor revisions. I've seen good comparisons of browser support for CSS2 and CSS3 [webdevout.net]. Anyone know of a good summary of current browsers' CSS1 support?

Re:

[Salvance]

I don't know if we should give browsers any slack just because CSS2 is "only 8.5 years old". It's pretty poor IMO that a widespread standard such as CSS 2.0 still isn't implemented fully by any browser.

Re:10 years old...

[poot_rootbeer]

It's pretty poor IMO that a widespread standard such as CSS 2.0 still isn't implemented fully by any browser.

Maybe that's not only because browser developers have been lazy (IE) or preoccupied with rewriting the browser from the ground up (Netscape/Firefox) for the past 8.5 years, but also because CSS 2.0 is a convoluted, sloppily designed specification?

Re:10 years old...

[Shados]

but also because CSS 2.0 is a convoluted, sloppily designed specification

Correct. Honestly, I don't really ever want to see an -actively pushed-, and considered "standard" specification proposition go out without a reference implementation. Sit down, agree to a specification, propose it, then make a reference implementation, THEN start pushing it.

When you look at most successful specs, from videocard chipsets, to Java specifications, they come with a reference implementation: this makes sure that everything makes sense in -practice-, not just in theory. With CSS, it is all about theory, without real world tests.

The only reason it got pushed as standard, is because the web evolved too fast for its own good, and no one realised what was happening before it was too late, to propose an alternative to CSS.

Re:

[Bogtha]

With CSS, it is all about theory, without real world tests.

On the contrary, some of the most frequently complained about shortcomings of CSS are due to the desire to keep implementations simple, which is practically the opposite of being "all about theory". They purposefully left out things like a decent query mechanism because they considered it too hard for people to implement.

The only reason it got pushed as standard, is because the web evolved too fast for its own good, and no one realised wh

Re:

[Shados]

On the contrary, some of the most frequently complained about shortcomings of CSS are due to the desire to keep implementations simple, which is practically the opposite of being "all about theory". They purposefully left out things like a decent query mechanism because they considered it too hard for people to implement.

Makes sense. However, looking at the specs, its too simple to pass a real world usuability test (aka: do what my customers want it to do), yet too convoluted to be implemented properly

Re:

[Bogtha]

You know, the whole "This property works. But only for elements of this type. Or with this, this, or that property. Unless its parent has this property, or is of this type. Unless you're using %, in which case it doesn't work at all. Unless....". Holy jesus!

Yeah, that's really a pain in the neck, particularly for for designers, but again, it's a limitation brought about by the desire to make it easy to implement rendering engines. If you look at a lot of the things that match your description, you'll

Re:

[Shados]

I agree, to some extent. The catch is here: There are many different browser based engines, usualy in the form of plugins, that work fine, even on limited hardware. Flash, for example.

The reason WHY they made CSS the way it is, makes a lot of sense, I'll give you that. However, they failed. The browser already has to be aware of a ton more things, for DOM, javascript, etc. So CSS's implementation helps...cellphones. Thats about it...

The only thing in the spec that makes sense put in perspective, as someone

Re:

[Kelson]

I don't know if we should give browsers any slack just because CSS2 is "only 8.5 years old".

Sorry, I left out the scare quotes around "only."

Re:

[jd]

No doubt we'll see plenty of confusion, given that CSS2 is barely recognized. Hmmm - maybe Slashdot should claim CSS10 compliance, as the site lists it. :)

As for CSS 2 being 8.5 years old, that's 3,192.5 days. If we assume a programmer can spend 8 hours a day, that gives us 24,820 workable programming hours since the spec came out, per programmer. Sure, outside of F/OSS (and Electronic Arts) no programmer is going to work 365 days a year, but then very few companies are going to allocate just one programmer

A little ironic?

[iamjoltman]

Is it just me, or is it a little ironic that the page that celebrates 10 years of CSS is so bland looking?

Re:

[Klaidas]

No, it's not just you ;)
I've noticed that almost all log-living websites have such a blank desing :|

Re:

[Aqua OS X]

Ironic? No.

Fitting? Yes.

Re:

[AnyoneEB]

But it's highly themeable. ;)

And apparently

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Slashdot's advertisers STILL CAN'T GET IT RIGHT. I just saw a CSS error, in Firefox 1.5, that disappeared with a reload. Obviously a top of screen banner ad went bad.

It just works!

[skia]

I was ... disappointed (but not surprised) that no browser on my computer correctly renders the Acid2 test.

You're clearly not using a mac [slashdot.org].

Wow!

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

PNG was almost 10 years old when IE finally supported it! Maybe this means that IE8* will have CSS! Hurray!

*IE8 is expected to debut sometime in late 2018.

Re:

[blibbler]

Curiously IE was the first browser to support PNG alpha channel.

Re:Wow!

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Thank you. My joke wasn't nearly clumsy enough on its own, I needed someone completely oblivious to sarcasm to come along and add that part in.

Re:

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

It finally supports alpha transparency. The problem is, with their WGA bullshit and abandonment of older platforms, IE7 will never become the 99% adoption (among IE users) that it needs to become, not in any sane period of time. Just dropping WGA and pushing it out as a critical update, we'd be able to ignore filter() bullshit by the end of January.

They're not interested in giving out their browser, so much as forcing obselensence to sell copies of the new OS. Funny how their browser was only free long enou

Re:

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

We're not talking about their OS. We're talking about browsers. If they want to check if the OS is valid, fine, but tying downloads of IE7 to this is bad for everyone.

Same with security patches... even if it's a pirated copy of windows, having it unsecure harms everyone. And for a company that had no problem with piracy when it was doing them good, to turn around and pull this stunt, well, it's pretty damn low. Even for them.

Has IE suddenly started to cost money without me noticing?

Yes. If it is tied to a W

Re:

[Kelson]

Too bad PNG is still not supported correctly by IE (alpha channel).

I take it you haven't been following news about IE7? Or did I miss something and it's got some major bug in its alpha channel support?

Re:

[Yvan256]

IE7 won't replace IE5 and IE6 for quite a few years to come. Today's support comes from yesterday. As the parent wrote, we should have proper CSS support from IE users at around 2018.

Re:

[styrotech]

Don't worry, all is not lost despite the PNG alpha channel being fixed. As far as I'm aware IE7 still screws up gamma on PNGs.

10 years

[wumpus188]

<div class='rant'> ... and still no vertical centering. </rant>

Re:

[Yvan256]

... and still no "height=100% of parent container" either. We're still forced to do either javascript and/or visual hacks to make two columns of the same height with dynamic content inside each column.

The problem is systemic.

[Ayanami Rei]

HTML, from it's inception, was designed to be layout indepedent. The size and placement of objects is determined from inside out, expanding to fit.

CSS follows this model, to keep things from horribly breaking when a browser decides to turn off some CSS feature or substitute a stylesheet for print preview or what have you.

Saying that some container should expand to an arbitrary size that hasn't been determined yet breaks the model. That becomes especially problematic when you nest a series of parent-relative

Re:

[brunascle]

that's what they're talking about.

i dont remember the specifics of it, but i ran into this problem last year trying to set height=100% on a table. when it didnt work, i hunted down the reason: apparently, proper HTML has never had height=100% as a valid value for a table. the w3c explained that tables were never meant to be used for layout, but only for displaying tabular data.

Re:

[Shados]

The part that irks me about the whole "table were never meant to be used for layout" deal, is that in most other environment, there are multiple layout methods. CSS implements most of those. Even a subset of "table layouts" in the form of the display:table-cell, display:table, etc, but no actual grid/table layout of some kind. To do some stuff, these ARE the easiest way to do things.

So in the same way in other environments we have "data tables", to display tabular data, and "table layout" to do what tables

Re:

[Yvan256]

Tables are supposed to be used for tabular data, not content layout.

Re:

[Yvan256]

I have no problem centering something vertically or making two columns of the same height with dynamic content using nothing but a combination of HTML and CSS.

Really? Only HTML and CSS? No table and no javascript messing around rewriting the document?

Then why don't you share your genius with us, oh great AC?

Re:10 years

[Scarblac]

Really? Only HTML and CSS? No table and no javascript messing around rewriting the document?

In what way is table not HTML?

? Surely?

[littleghoti]

</div>? Surely?

Re:

[VJ42]

<quote>&lt;div class='rant'&gt; ... and still no vertical centering. &lt;/rant&gt;</quote>
<pedant>
Your HTML isn't properly formatted, it should be </div>, not </rant>
</pedant>

Re:

[strider44]

I can't believe you just typed &amp;lt; and &amp;gt;.

Re:

[shmert]

http://www.w3.org/Style/Examples/007/center-examp l e.html [w3.org] should do the trick, although I tend to be among those ridiculing the CSS zealots who resort to obscene hacks to get around using tables. This example seems like kind of a copout, since it uses the display:table functionality in CSS. So, you can't use a table, but it's perfectly fine to use a

and tell the browser to render it like a table :P

http://www.csszengarden.com/

[Brummund]

Yay, yet another bunch of web pages with light grey text on white background! Just what the world needed.

Come on guys, it might be valid CSS, but it is not easy on the eyes.

Re:

[spun]

There are dozens of different entries at that site. Maybe hundreds, it's been a few years since I looked though all of them. Most of them do not have light grey text on a black background. The neat thing about the site is that the html is exactly the same, only the CSS changes.

Re:

[ewhac]

You did check the hundreds of other stylings of the same content, didn't you?

In case you didn't, here [csszengarden.com] are [csszengarden.com] a few [csszengarden.com] examples [csszengarden.com].

The point of the site is to illustrate how the exact same HTML file can be displayed in an infinite number of ways by simply changing the CSS. The site is essentially an argument for a semantic Web.

Schwab

Uh oh

[sirnuke]

Uh oh [w3.org]
#navigation li Invalid number : text-shadow Property text-shadow doesn't exist : 0 2px 4px #000

Re:Uh oh

[Bogtha]

The W3C's CSS validator has recently been changed to check against CSS 2.1 by default instead of CSS 2. The text-shadow property was removed from CSS 2.1 because virtually no browser developers bothered to implement it. The stylesheet is still a valid CSS 2 stylesheet, but you wouldn't know that because nobody's bothered to come up with a way of labelling stylesheets to denote what level of CSS they are meant to conform to.

10 years of "how come"

[elcid73]

Håkon Wium Lie [opera.com]

Gah! Ten?

[Ai Olor-Wile]

CSS10? But IE still doesn't have CSS2... aha! It's a binary joke! I get it now! There are 10 kinds of browsers in the world: those that implement CSS properly and those that don't.

Re:

[RAMMS+EIN]

``There are 10 kinds of browsers in the world: those that implement CSS properly and those that don't.''

Sadly, I think there is only 1 kind.

CSS turns 10, typographers still crying

[Aqua OS X]

I'm sorry, but I can't wait until my options for web type are more then the font tag, a crappy style sheet, a picture that looks like type, Flash, or some sort of odd embeded media option that a only fraction of people can view. I hope by the time Slashdot posts "CSS turns 20" we've finally embraced our SVG overlords, or some sort of superior vector graphic solution.

Even if browsers were to finally properly support tracking, x-height controls, etc., CSS is still obnoxiously rudimentary in comparison to the

Re:CSS turns 10, typographers still crying

[croddy]

The great thing about a personal computer is that I can customize the settings to my personal preferences. If, god help us all, you ever do find a way to embed typefaces in web pages, I'll be painlessly overriding your designs with black Bitstream Vera on a pale gray background.

I can't wait either.

Re:

[Aqua OS X]

Believe it or not, some graphic designers / typographers actually know what they hell they're doing; and they've been schooled to use typesetting to as a communication tool that can actually increase comprehension, legibility, reading speed, etc. Yet I can't necessarily say thats all, or the majority, of "graphic designers."

That said, yes, properly styled and typeset text needs to live and accessible. It's currently not (at least in any practical form), and that's the problem.

Re:

[Bob Uhl]

The problem is not that typographers/graphic designers are ignorant--quite the opposite, actually: the problem is that they are too learned in outdated technology. They learnt their skills on the printed page, which has something like 1200-2400 dpi resolution and a fixed (or at least controllable) page size. What makes sense for books doesn't necessarily make sense on-screen; in fact, sometimes it's the worst possible thing.

Now, the very best typographers and graphic designers are the ones who will sepe

Re:

[Aqua OS X]

And by desiring proper typesetting tools you assume I'm asking for web text that is not live and accessible (as I noted in the past post)?
You're ranting about the exact same thing I'm ranting about, current typesetting conventions.

The current convention, more or less consists of typeset text which is generally not live or accessible (ie can't select / copy / use with universal access software), or live / accessible text which can only be typeset in rudimentary ways. This is bad. You shouldn't need to use im

Usable positioning in another 10?

[bill_mcgonigle]

Hey, and maybe in another ten years we'll have a position system that works reliably across browsers and can survive the window being resized, the dpi being changed, or the font being enlarged. Other than tables I mean.

I did the CSS -showcase thing a few months ago and about 10% of the layouts by the CSS Masters of the Universe fit the above criteria. It may not be impossible, but the bar's too high.

Re:

[RAMMS+EIN]

``Hey, and maybe in another ten years we'll have a position system that works reliably across browsers and can survive the window being resized, the dpi being changed, or the font being enlarged. Other than tables I mean.''

My first reaction to this is: I don't think this is a problem with CSS. Maybe there is a problem with implementations, or with webmasters doing things the wrong way. Am I missing something?

Re:

[crayz]

Yeah: CSS makes it so difficult to do proper layout that will look right in all browsers, that most people stick with tables. Part of this is the fault of browser implementors(*cough* IE *cough*), but its a real sore-spot for web design

Yes and in 10 Years

[fullphaser]

They have yet to convince me just how they are going to make the table obsolete, every time you turn a corner you are hearing from CSS users (including myself) the end of the table is near, don't use the table, I think the real question ought to be why not use the table, besides the lag, the complications with non css table layouts actually tend to go down in my experience. Yes I could spend 2 days figuring out why the div layout is being difficult and use CSS hacks to make it cross browser, but in the long run the div/css layout has a lot to work on before you see it being adopted as anything more than a side note for those who want to show off their skills. Right now CSS because of its major lack of vertical control is far less stable than the table structure, yes we are told you should burn in hell for even thinking of using tables, but on the end note it works, and quite frankly If I am going to get more stable results at the the price of not promoting the great CSS, than I can get over it. I am glad CSS has had 10 years and a congratulations are in order for them, but please if you are going to promise the end of an era or style try to make sure you can back it up with proof like the decline of nearly every major dynamic web software relying on tables to ensure stability (with CMS's trying to move to the div, the BBS stuck in a rut because css/divs just don't seem to help do them well

Re:

[bwy]

I agree 100%. I don't do a lot of HTML work- but I seem to have a project every year or so. For the past several years I've started each project fresh thinking "this is the time I quick using tables!" and it never fails- I spend days trying to make a div layout work. My deadline approaches and I end up using tables again.

Who the heck is behind this "table is dead" mentality? Personally, I dislike CSS. It leaves guys like me in the cold. What do I mean? In my experience CSS isn't as easy or usable

Re:

[melikamp]

In my experience CSS isn't as easy or usable by people who code HTML by hand- especially on a casual basis.

What the heck do you mean? I always coded all of my HTML by hand (it's not much, but it's something), and when I discovered CSS I thought that it was contrived by Jesus and designed by Moses himself. Look, ma, I can change the color of all links, on all pages on my website, by fixing this one value.

I know, I'm a lazy bastard. You guys probably just go into the Perl interaction mode and fix it with

Re:

[growse]

Because by using a table as a stylistic and not a semantic element, you're depriving me of the ability and the choice of viewing your page without any styling at all. For a well designed page, I should be able to switch all styling off and have the content presented to me in a logical, sensible manner. If you use tables and I switch CSS off, I've suddenly got a whole bunch of information presented in a table for absolutely no reason. People aren't saying "Don't use the table", they're saying "Don't use the

Re:

[mdfst13]

And how does one align equations properly without tables? Or include a matrix?

How does one align equations properly with a table? Given an example of the effect that you want, someone can probably suggest a superior alternative. Possible example: http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/webmatters/superscri pts.html [xs4all.nl]

By matrix, do you mean something like

816
357
492

? Hmm...I see rows and columns. Since this is data that is *supposed* to be tabular, you would use a table for semantic reasons. By contrast, in a three column layout with a header and a footer, the data is not organized semantical

Heh, those funny typos

[scdeimos]

Nice to know that not even W3C can afford to spell check everything: teached CSS [w3.org]. It's not just /. editors! :)

CSS validator useless

[wysiwia]

I just had some experience with the CSS validator (http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator.htm l .en [w3.org]) since I tried to make my new pages CSS compliant. First even if I choose "English" on the front page the results are in "German". My dear, before making pages conform to standards they should first be functional correct. How could W3C put up such a silly beginners mistake.

Yet whenever an error is spotted the resulting error message is more or less useless.

td,th,tr{

Re:

[J0nne]

td,th,tr{
align:left;
vertical-align:baseline;
}

Perhaps you meant 'text-align [w3schools.com]'? There's no 'align' in css (and browsers don't even support it, I've tested it). Now, it basically says "align doesn't exist, you dummy. Use something el

Huh.

[NulDevice]

From reading the comments, I'm guessing I'm the only one who doesn't really think CSS is that hard to understand. Yeah, the implementations are clumsy, and it lacks in some important areas, but holy mother of balls is it preferable to me over editing 4000 font tags in a website. The syntax is kinda ugly, but compared a lot of the other syntaxes in the web world (javascript, I'm looking at you) it's clean and sleek. Sheesh.

I think a huge problem is that a lot of people use CSS like they use font tags - in

Re:

[Ingolfke]

I'm not up on the finer points out the definitions for "nerd" and "geek" but it would seem to me that if your first thought about a core web technology like CSS was about Counter Strike your more likely to be a loser then a nerd... maybe a nerdy loser.

Re:Safari has done Acid2 for more than a year!

[Shados]

The sad part is, Safari can pass Acid 2, but last I checked, it didn't handle onload image event contexts properly. Sad.

works perfectly

[commodoresloat]

"Safari can't open the page.
Safari could not open the page "http://www.webstandards.org/action/acid2/" because the server stopped responding."

Thanks, slashdot!

Re:

[Midnight Thunder]

Opera also passes. What's your point? The summary said no browser on his computer passes ACID2, so I'm guessing he's not a Mac or Opera user.

Yup, he is probably using Windows 98 or something. Of course there is the possibility he is using Lynx on a VT100 terminal :)

Re:

[RAMMS+EIN]

``And here I thought that CSS meant Content Scrambling System(This is the 10th anniversary of CSS btw) which isn't a great thing to celebrate since it was cracked in a three years.''

It took that long? I never knew.

Re:

[mabhatter654]

should have had the W3C do their encrypting engine!! Cascading Style Sheets STILL haven't been cracked!

Re:

[Rakishi]

Big deal.

Because it's always fun to have to change 342 different areas/tags to make page or site wide change.

The real effect of CSS was to make web layout more complicated, so as to keep a role for programmers in web design. Otherwise, the artists would be in full control by now.

No one forces you to use CSS, if your hypothetical artist wants to they can have all the fun they want with html. Well that is until their templated editor craps out on something (I'm assuming they're not utterly stupid), they need

Re:

[Animats]

Because it's always fun to have to change 342 different areas/tags to make page or site wide change.

That's what Dreamweaver is for.

Slashdot has many users who like to hack on HTML/XML, but realistically, that job has been automated.

Re:

[Rakishi]

And as the rest of my comment said, a half assed hack of a solution has it's own massive set of problems (scalability will be worse). I'm sure trying to write a complex Ajax app in Dreamweaver is great fun...Hell, even a complex server side scripted one would probably be hell (then you get to hack all this stuff as server side templates I guess, equally fun).

And artists are simply abusing the fuck out of Flash instead of bothering with html anyway, god knows it's probably easer than trying to shove together

Re:

[Dracos]

The real effect of CSS (and its goal) is separation of content from presentation.

CSS is about as much programming as HTML. Ever tried to execute a stylesheet? I don't think so. Calling it a macro system proves you have no idea what you're talking about.

The only added complexity in using CSS is that it's another syntax to learn. Offsetting that is the fact that table layouts are bloated and their structure is hard to follow. CSS layouts result in leaner, cleaner documents. As they say, "It's about

It was worth it

[WebCowboy]

The real effect of CSS was to make web layout more complicated, so as to keep a role for programmers in web design. Otherwise, the artists would be in full control by now.

The artists DID have control for a dark time in the mid-to-late 1990s, when the Internet bubble was in the earliest stages of inflation. I like to call it the "JPEG Jigsaw Puzzle Age" of the WWW.

While I think that CSS is far from perfect (it WAS, ironically enough, inspired by a concept from Microsoft after all) I do in fact find a properly-written CSS-formatted HTML page much EASIER to follow. Back in the dark JPEG Jigsaw Puzzle age, when trying to view or parse HTML source, it was cluttered with FONT-this and IMG SRC="spacer.gif"-that and TABLEs inside TABLEs inside TABLEs containing image maps. It was absolutely DREADFUL. And no, nested DIVs are NOT the same as nested tables, because tables have rows and columns and are meant for TABULAR DATA--NOT for general structuring of content. DIVs get no more complicated (from a content perspective) than simple nesting, whereas TABLEs have specialised TR collections within them, which in turn have TDs...and COLSPAN and ROWSPAN even further complicate and confuse when used for layout purposes.

CSS is more than a formatting tool--it enables content and presentation separation as well as semantic web design. The web would be beautiful but completely unusable GARBAGE if artists were in "full control". Similarly, the web would be efficient and powereful, but ugly and arcane if programmers were in "full control" (that is, we'd probably still be messing with Gopher, Archie, WAIS or similar powerful but ugly and/or user-unfriendly systems). If the artists and programmers could cooperate properly (and development tools that make use of CSS and HTML standards more effectively enabled such cooperation perhaps) then we get balance between effective presentation and functionality.

I suppose the biggest problem with CSS, beyond inconsistent interpretation of CSS by various browsers (which isn't CSS' fault) is that it is far too easy to mis-use it, and most CSS isn't properly or effectively used (probably because artists are trying to control it ;-). Many (or most?) people who employ CSS see it the way the parent poster Animals sees it: as some kind of fancy layout-macro system. I see a lot of places where class selectors are used when IDs were more appropriate (or vice versa). But even MORE irksome is when I see IDs and classes in HTML and CSS named stupidly: div id="toprightblock"? class="bigboldbluefont"? It makes me want to vomit! Basically, it's like the W3C gave us a set of fancy Henkel knives to use for gourmet cooking and we're all using them to gouge open tins of Chef-Boy-Ar-Dee ravioli.

A properly designed XHTML-and-CSS page is absolutely beautiful to behold: It is attractive yet simple to navigate. It is accessible (it degrades gracefully in audio and text-only browsers, and there is no need for "printer-friendly" links--ever--so get rid of them--NOW). It is easy to manage (don't like the way it looks just change the CSS, and if you need to update the content you can do so in the XHTML with virtually no effect on presentation). It is easy to parse and very human-readable (if you properly name your elements that is--use id="navigationMenu" instead of "toprightblock" and class="articleName" instead of "bigboldblue"). Without all that TABLE/TD/TR/IMG SRC="spacer.gif"/FONT/blah blah clutter in the HTML you can easily see the document structure, links, etc...and without all the

blahblahblah

...etc content clutter in the CSS you can clearly see how each component in a document is supposed to be displayed. [slashdot.org]

Sorry...had to get this out...sometimes I can't resist a troll...

Re:

[suv4x4]

And no, nested DIVs are NOT the same as nested tables, because tables have rows and columns and are meant for TABULAR DATA

You know, no one can help you if you don't see the irony in your own statements.
And TYPING IN ALL CAPS doesn't help get your supposed point across either.

Check the CSS3 Layout module proposal: it has rows and columns. Because this is what layouts are. Until CSS gains back this ability, tables will have plenty of cases where they have edge on CSS hacks.

Do you do publishing or typesetting?

[WebCowboy]

...because your idea of what a layout is seems quite rudimentary to me:

Check the CSS3 Layout module proposal: it has rows and columns. Because this is what layouts are.

A layout is NOT a table! A table is a specific KIND of layout in a sense (it is a way to structure content as well, as in a spreadsheet or database, which is why XHTML still has a TABLE construct). You might as well say "Check out this square--it has four sides. Because this is what parallelograms are".

Layouts can be free-form (flowing) or

Re:

[WebCowboy]

CSS found inspirations in many places, but not at Microsoft.

Hmm...well being this seems to come right from the horse's mouth I stand corrected...thanks Hakon. I was under the incorrect impression because if IE3 being the first kid on the block with meaningful support for CSS, while Netscape seemed to resist it in favour of their own way of doing things (which is still ironic considering Mozilla's much more dedicated efforts to support the standard today).

It is a shame that MS did not remain committed to su

Re:

[Dracos]

I'm baffled and saddened that you're proud of this. Do you still have a Pentium I as your main desktop? How's that bandwidth bill treating you, since your Intarweb pages are 20% to 60% more bloated than they could be?

Re:

[Abcd1234]

Are you kidding? Bandwidth is near free, these days.

You really are an idiot if you believe that these bandwidth concerns have anything to do with the end-user (as opposed to the company, who is paying for every byte they send).

Re:

[Bogtha]

No, if you are thinking of the <div> element type as a replacement for the <table> element type, you're still doing it wrong. Moving to CSS isn't about replacing <table> with <div>, it's about using the most appropriate element type for the job. You only use <div> when there isn't anything more appropriate (there usually is).

One post of almost pure jibberish...

[soliptic]

For example, Position Relative. Well relative to what? The preceeding DIV?

No.

The immediately preceeding line of HTML?

No.

It needs to be glued together better, objectified if you will.

No it doesn't, it's clear already.

In my opinion if something is declared relative, it should be a requirement that it be declared what it is relative to, instead realying on simply the preceeding line,

"Relying on the preceding line"? It does no such thing.

"Well relative to what" - simple answer - the

Re:

[soliptic]

I appreciate your comments, well except for the last one.

Heh, sorry. I'd had quite a few whiskys and wasn't very polite. Thanks for not being more offended by my ranting tone! :)

I also like the notion of Frames which very neatly devide up the space you are working in and also makes it easier to maintain with things like header frames for menus that are defined once in one file. I guess this could be fixed by having an include syntax without having to use something like Java Script,

I usually use php