About Cascading Style Sheets
= Index DOT Html by Brian Wilson [bloo@blooberry.com] =

Style Sheet FAQ | CSS1 Property Index
Main Index | Style Sheet Index | Top Of Tree | Tag Index | Tag History

Statistics
Authors: Bert Bos, Hakon Lie
Timeline:
- Earliest drafts available - May, 1995
- First W3C Working Draft - November, 1995
- Becomes W3C recommendation - December 17, 1996
What Are Cascading Style Sheets?
       If you have not heard the buzz about Style Sheets in HTML yet, you will soon.

       Style Sheets, while not meant to control layout, are a simple yet powerful method of allowing attachment of rendering information to HTML documents. The language syntax for specifying Style Sheet information is quite different than HTML, so significant explanation will be required. Matters are made difficult for authors due to the official CSS1 specification from the W3C not being completely supported by the browsers that are attempting to implement this functionality.

       HTML (a derivative of SGML) was designed primarily as a content-based mark up language. The past year and a half has seen the introduction of many new Physical Formatting and other tags/attributes by browser vendors which has muddied the intention of HTML. One of the main reasons for Style Sheets is to stop the creation of new HTML Physical Formatting tags (like FONT) by browser vendors that specify style information.

Advantages of Style Sheets:
  • Properties are specified using common desktop publishing terminology
  • Easy to author and read
  • Produces nicer HTML markup
  • Easy transition from HTML extensions
  • Many new visual control features
  • Easy extension for future capabilities

Boring Copyright Stuff....