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200727 Sep
Posted in CSS3 Previews, Modules, W3C
The CSS Working Group recently met face-to-face in Beijing, and have released a series of notes about some of the issues they discussed regarding the current and future states of CSS.
One interesting possibility that was raised is to allow rotation of page elements; according to the original proposal, these are some of the possible use cases:
- rotate a block of text 90 degrees as for a tab on left of page
- rotate an image (or block of text) an arbitrary amount
- use rotated column headings for narrow table columns
It must be stressed that this exists purely as an idea at the moment, so we won’t be seeing it any time soon. Still, it would create many new possibilities in web design.
Following our discussion of the inherent ambiguity in the border-radius declaration, it has been decided that the simpler syntax used by Mozilla will used for the shorthand; that is, in order to apply elliptical corners on elements, you will have to declare them all separately. I think this is a good decision, and I’m delighted that the CSSWG have listened to the views of the community. A pat on the back for everyone involved!
Finally, the CSSWG are to release an annual(?) snapshot of modules considered stable, in order that browser makers and developers can begin to implement them. The 2007 snapshot will include:
The 2008 version is likely to include Paged Media and Media Queries, and possibly Ruby and Backgrounds and Borders.
So that’s the state of CSS today. Interesting stuff; many thanks to the CSSWG for making it all public.
You can skip to the end and leave a response.
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Comments
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01.
The annual snapshot is a great attempt at moving things forward and it’ll certainly be interesting to see how Internet Explorer plans on implementing these modules once they’ve been considered stable.
Graceful degrading is always an option but considering Internet Explorer holds so much of the market is it a real solution?
Offering a slightly less functional website for users without JavaScript or plain text verion for those with images or styles unavailable is a decent solution considering that many users are aware that they’re either using a device that offers less or have purposely switched these features off.
However, can the same be said about the majority of IE users who may receive a plainer version of a website due to it’s poor support of CSS3 modules?
The snapshot of modules is a great move forward in making the browser makers aware of what they need to support but I get the feeling it’ll be a little bit of a waste until Microsoft get their act together and start making the progress that Firefox, Opera and Safari have made over the last few years.
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Personally, MSIE is a loss cause. As much as the reality of IE’s dominance is concerned, MS is just hampering the development of the technologies and the web with their in-ability to accept the reality that the Internet doesn’t revolve around them anymore.
OOXML vs ODF and the likes.. MS will do everything it can to stop anyone from taking the center seat from them.
So, if we really want to move on towards the future, there is no other option for us but to forget about MSIE. It will stay as it is today and in the past because they want to be the one dictating web-standards – which is not the case as we all know.
Yes, MSIE is the dominant browser, but if we more and more sites starts to ignore IE, those MSIE loyals will sooner or later move to a better browser. Now if they really do not want to touch any other browser but IE, then they have to live with the reality that there are far less sites they can open – by that time.
That’s just my opinion. Right now, we can still develop for MSIE because the gap is still tolerable, sooner it won’t be the case. We will have to choose. Embrace the future technology and developments and forget IE ever existed, or keep designing for IE and give more headaches to ourselves?
My opinion and PoV..
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Opacity in Internet Explorer 8 development » Broken Links says:Comment » September 28th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
[…] just recently writing a post on CSS3.info which praises the CSS Working Group for their interaction with and communication to the web development […]
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04.
Dave,
Graceful degradation is very important; IE users while getting a “plainer” website, will still get the website at it’s full fuctionality. I think that’s a far better state to be in than where we were a few years ago (and still at on some sites) where IE is the *only* browser that the sites work on. -
05.
Yes, MSIE is the dominant browser, but if we more and more sites starts to ignore IE, those MSIE loyals will sooner or later move to a better browser.
I think we’re talking about decades before that’s going to happen. People use IE cos it comes with their OS and most people buy PCs and use the OS that comes with it. Most people either lack the inclination or the know-how to download and try out a new browser; there’s still a large number of people out there who think the only way to access the Internet is to click on the IE icon on their desktop.
Granted, kids these days learn about computers from an early age and are more likely to be comfortable with trying out new browsers, but at the same time the population is ageing and older people are acquiring computer skills. These people are less likely to try out anything not preinstalled with their OS.
So I think it’s just a pipedream that you’re going to be able to forget about IE any time soon. (And if we’re lucky, IE might just catch up to the point where we don’t really care anymore.)
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06.
Punishing people for using IE is not an answer to the problem. By all means, code your site with graceful enhancement to take advantage of more standards-compliant browsers, but visitors using IE should get a good experience as well. Far better to explain the advantages of not using IE, and provide feedback to Microsoft on what is urgently needed.
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07.
It’s not really ‘punishing’ the users of MSIE, but rather showing them its limitations. MS is not willing to improve its IE browser, if they want to stay that way, then we show their users they will see websites better under other browsers.
The reason why MSIE is stubborn is because most websites or web developers take their time to cater to MSIE, yes it is the dominant browser, but one reason that it is the dominant browser is because the ‘casual’ users do not have a reason to switch.
It’s giving them a reason to switch, it is showing them the difference. Right now, it is impossible because the gap is not that great or obvious, but one day it will. And we still yet to see if the MSIE 7 team will really be going to patch web-standards as they promised.
See, it is not making your websites not viewable to IE, but rather developing for IE according to what it provides – less than web-standard. Then for web-standard compliant browsers, we develop to its full extent. Right now, many websites develop “based” on IE. With IE’s limitations, all other compliant browsers are wasted, their being compliant is not used to its full extent – just because we need to put IE users as top priority.
It should be the other way around. Hence, MS sticks to their non-compliance, they see us basing our sites on their browser.
“I will develop for IE coz its the dominant browser. IE is non-compliant, so if I develop based on IE, it will look fine on compliant browsers.” type of attitude.
Im not saying all are like that, but most are. Should be “I’ll use what compliant browsers can do, and let it show gracefully for IE.” it’s like “MSIE: Encourage the use of ActiveX so they’ll stick with IE” – let’s reverse that. They can still enjoy the website, but they’ll have more enjoyable experience on a compliant browser. That’s the idea.
Just an opinion.
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I disagree, users of IE6 and IE7 don’t choose to do so because they think the browser renders the same as other browsers. They do so because they don’t know any better and because that’s the browser that comes installed with their OS.
Even gracefully degrading a site for non-standards compliant browsers won’t make them switch… it’ll just hand the advantage to your competitors website who have taken the time to make the site look good in IE6 and IE7.
Just my personal opinion of course but I think it’s a bit naive to expect users of IE to realise that they could get a better experience by using Opera/Firefox/Safari etc even if you were to adopt the method you’re suggesting.
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MS is not willing to improve its IE browser
So the fixing of an array of bugs in IE7 is Microsoft displaying an unwillingness to improve the browser?
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10.
I’m no Microsoft fanboy, but I do think it’s unfair to claim they deliberately won’t improve IE. The problem is that IE got so successful that it had a virtual monopoly of the market, and at that point, they made the decision to stop active development. This was on the one hand a blessing (no more browser wars meant a stable platform for developers) and on the other, a curse; there were too many bugs in the rendering engine.
With no serious competition for a few years, companies built whole suites of web apps to work in IE – including the bugs. The reason that MS can’t suddenly make a bells-and-whistles standards-compliant browser and roll it out to everyone is that it would potentially break all those web apps and leave many unhappy customers.
I know it’s a pain in the arse and leaves us all frustrated, but it’s not a deliberate plan of MS to have a poor browser.
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11.
maybe Microsoft should takeover Opera, and release it as IE8, and hopefully make it a part of Win XP SP-3 and Win Vista SP-1. it’ll be such a good news!
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12.
As far as I can see the snapshots are of complete modules. While this is useful, I think it would be nicer to hi-ligt the features from none complete modules that are stable, as browser vendors do not need to implement a full module at a time. There are specifically some things from backgrounds and borders that it would be nice to know are stable enough to implement.
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If you look at the recent WG discussions on Backgrounds and Borders, you can see that many of the features there aren’t stable enough to implement without a vendor extension. We haven’t ruled out doing-feature-by-feature inclusions in the future, but nobody brought up any that were really stable enough to fit this year’s snapshot.
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Fatih Hayrioğlu’nun not defteri » 02 Ekim 2007 Web’den Seçme Haberler says:Comment » October 1st, 2007 at 11:14 pm
[…] CSS3.0 ile ilgili yenilikler devam ediyor. Açı verme özelliği eklenmiş. Nesneleri ve resimleri belli açılarda döndürebilecekmişiz. Bağlantı […]
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I am really looking forward to the possibility of rotated page elements in CSS3. I realize it will be a long time before we can ever use it, but that is a step in the right direction for the kind of standards-based control we should have as designers.
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16.
Once you add a CSS “rotate” style, you’ll also need CSS “rotatable”, for the browser to offer a user interface for rotating elements. It should work similarly to “resizable”.
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CSS Snapshot 2007 released as a working draft - CSS3 . Info says:Comment » October 21st, 2007 at 9:21 pm
[…] As we mentioned at the end of last month, the W3C have released a working draft of their first annual snapshot. The snapshots are intended to show which specs are stable enough to be considered part of the current state CSS. […]
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19.
IE is slow and constantly crashing on whatever os it is used on. It’s time microsoft came up with a new game plan, because IE should just lay down and die like a wounded horse.
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