CSS3

Opera has one of the better levels of support for CSS3 (and other standards), making it an ideal platform for experimenting with future technologies and new techniques that these standards will offer. However, this has always been let down by the fact that Opera is very lacking in the web developer tools segment. To be frank, Firebug and the Web Developer Toolbar blow away anything Opera has offered in this realm.

This short coming is about to change soon. Opera has just announced today, with the release of Opera 95 beta 2, that Opera Dragonfly will be Opera’s web developer tools. These will be released as an alpha on the 6^th of May. In line with their alpha status, the tools will not be feature complete, but they will show a good foundation of Opera’s developer tool vision.

Once released, Opera is looking for feedback on the tools, to make sure they fit the needs of real world web developers and designers. I’m looking forward to web developers getting their hands on the Opera Dragonfly and finding out what the impressions are. If you are interested then go the the Opera Dragonfly website on the 6^th or just open the Web Developer menu item from the tools menu. In the mean time, Opera 9.5 beta 2 (Kestrel) has been released today, so it is a good time to check out what CSS3 properties it supports.

I don’t have time at the moment to write a good summary, but the link to the announcement is below which includes some examples

CSS Gradients in Webkit

This week has seen the release of a raft of new proposals for features to be integrated into the CSS specification:

• CSS Animation
• CSS Transforms
• CSS Transitions
• CSS Variables

I personally have reservations about the Visual Effects proposals, feeling this is better suited to Javascript, but I seem to be in the minority on this so I will cede to the majority. I’m pretty excited about Variables, however.

The CSS WG had a face-to-face meeting in San Diego last month, and have released their latest resolutions in a series of posts on their blog:

Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI

Some of the highlights I saw on my first read through:

• Apple’s proposed animation & transition properties are to be considered.
• Web fonts are to be worked on with the SVG team
• The Advanced Layout module is still being discussed but will be renamed the Template Layout module
• A new type of list, tree-lines, was proposed
• A proposal for the use of constants will be published

Obviously there’s a lot more in there, but it’s nice to see that the Working Group is working!

The Internet Explorer team announced on their blog today that they are unhappy with the slow progress and differing implementations of the various CSS3 modules, and will not be including any CSS3 functionality in IE8; instead they will be producing their own, alternative standard, which they are codenaming CSS.2012 (after the planned year of launch of the subsequent browser).

Few details have yet been released as to what the new standard will contain, although one new feature which was hinted at was the :silverlight selector, which will be used to replace text in selected elements with high-definition streaming video.

It is unlikely that CSS.2012 will be compatible with existing CSS standards, and MS intend to use their dominant market share to automatically push the new version onto desktops; with training being provided only by Microsoft-certificated teachers, this could end up being very expensive for web developers forced to re-train.

IE Platform Architect, Chris Wilson, said:

Other browsers and standards break the web, so CSS.2012 is our best effort at fixing it. It will be tightly integrated into .NET and Silverlight, and initially will only work in IE9. Other browsers will be able to license the technology after a few years, when we judge it is stable. Then they can’t break the web.

More information on the announcement here.

Update: It’s just after noon here in the UK, so time for me to confess: yes, this is an April Fool’s Day hoax; of course, Microsoft would never pull a stunt like this. Hope you all enjoyed the prank, and I’m happy I caught a few of you out!