Some ponderings on CSS3
Jan 10, 2007 · 2 minute readI’m starting to get properly interested in CSS3 for a few reasons. I’ve subscribed to the mailing list, read up on some of the working group goings on and done a bit of research ahead of really jumping in with some code play. Some of this could be of interest to others so here goes:
The best two resources I’ve found are the CSS Working group home page and the CSS3 Info
The CSS Working Group Under Construction site over at the W3C has a huge ammount of information. For those that dont know CSS is being split into a number of distinct modules, namely:
- Advanced layout
- Aural Style Sheets
- Backgrounds and Borders
- Basic User Interfaces
- Box Model
- Cascading and Inheritance
- Color
- Fonts
- Generated Content for Paged Media
- Generated and Replaced Content
- Hyperlink Presentation
- Introduction
- Line Layout
- Lists
- Maths
- Multi Column Layout
- Namespaces
- Object Model
- Paged Media
- Positioning
- Presentation Levels
- Reader Media Types
- Ruby
- Scoping
- Speech
- Syntax
- Tables
- Text
- Text Layout
- Values and Units
- Web Fonts
Phew. Their is also some work going on on profiles for TV, Printed media and Mobile. I’m interested in a few of these modules – particularly those dealing with Web Typography and the Basic User Interface module which deals with the look of form elements in their various states and more cursors and colors to describe GUIs (graphical user interfaces) that blend well with the user’s desktop environment.
CSS3 Info also has lots of information worth reading, including some good examples of parts of CSS3 that have been implemented ahead of recommendation in the preview section. My favourite bit however has to be the CSS selector test by Niels Leenheer. You can read a little more about that, and how different browsers do, or at least how they did in October. The W3C test suite is available too, but no where near as slick.
I’ve even gone and installed a WebKit nighly build to try out some of the features only supported their at the moment. Who knows? I might even add new designs to the site using new selectors as a treat for those silly enough to be using such experimental browsers.