CSS3

Opacity/rgba/hsla is already at the Candidate Rec stage in the CSS3 Color module. text-shadow is in CSS2 Rec, so it's effectively in CR. The rest of the features you're requesting are in CSS3 Backgrounds and Borders, so all we really need is to push that into CR. It needs another round or two of editing and reviewing first, but unless some major problems are found it should be possible to get it to Last Call at least by the end of the year (if we prioritize appropriately, which I hope we will). Comments on what looks good and what could be improved would be very helpful. The discussion in http://www.css3.info/border-radius-apple-vs-mozilla/ about border-radius had a lot of great points. @mira Multi-col won't solve layouts with different panels, it flows continuous text into multiple columns. The CSS3 Advanced Layout module is intending to address layout columns. We agree floats are a pain. They were never designed to do column layouts, and neither was absolute positioning (which is also a pain). Coarse layout is currently a gaping hole in CSS. :( Posted to " What is CSS2.2? " by fantasai July 25th, 2007

Creating CSS2.2 would be a ridiculous amount of unnecessary work. What would be far less work but be just as effective would be CSS2.1 + some key CSS3 modules that spec the features you want. I'd rather see a campaign formed around communicating what those features are to the working group and pressuring them and the implementors to work on those features. Posted to " What CSS 3 Can You Easily Use Right Now? " by fantasai July 24th, 2007

HR has been restored in HTML5 and its definition tweaked to refer to semantics rather than presentation. (The presentational attributes are of course all gone.) See http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/section-prose.html#the-hr Menu separators imo do belong in the markup. They're not there to make the menu pretty, they're there to show its structure. Posted to " A mock-up interface using CSS3 Colour " by fantasai August 4th, 2007

I think the idea of a CSS advisory board of web designers is great. We should totally do something like that. Posted to " Interview with Håkon Wium Lie [Part Two] " by fantasai September 9th, 2007

Heh, looks like Andy Clarke is already onto this idea: http://www.blueflavor.com/blog/design/blue_flavor_and_the_css_eleven.php :) Posted to " Interview with Håkon Wium Lie [Part Two] " by fantasai October 1st, 2007

I'd just like to note that thanks to this discussion the CSSWG has adopted Mozilla's shorthand syntax. :) Posted to " border-radius: Safari vs Mozilla " by fantasai September 13th, 2007

David Baron has written some test cases for CSS3 Color as well: http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/Test/CSS3/Color/20070927/ Posted to " Request: test cases! " by fantasai October 22nd, 2007

Media Queries didn't make it because there are actually a few major issues still open. I expect it'll make the next snapshot. :) Posted to " CSS Snapshot 2007 released as a working draft " by fantasai October 22nd, 2007

Aside from the piracy issue, the major hurdle for implementation is security. Evil fonts can actually crash your system or compromise it in other ways: some font formats contain executable code. Posted to " Webkit has web fonts support " by fantasai October 10th, 2007

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. Posted to " Latest updates to CSS 3 modules " by fantasai October 1st, 2007

So David, can we get you to post a link to your article on the CSS3 Soapbox? :) Posted to " Step on to the CSS3 Soapbox! " by fantasai December 12th, 2007

Daniel Glazman (Netscape, Mozilla, Disruptive Innovations, CSSWG) comments: http://www.glazman.org/weblog/dotclear/index.php?post/2007/12/14/Hakon-Lie-on-steroids Posted to " Opera files antitrust complaint against Microsoft " by fantasai December 16th, 2007

Wolf, why not? Posted to " CSS Drop Shadows " by fantasai December 17th, 2007

The syntax would most likely be identical to the one for 'text-shadow', so you'd get the first three, I think. Posted to " CSS Drop Shadows " by fantasai December 17th, 2007

Well, yeah, but CSS isn't a graphics program. In Photoshop you might do some extra touch-up after the drop-shadow command, but in CSS we don't have intermediate steps. CSS syntax needs to be able to express the desired end result, not how you get there. So that's why I'm asking for finished examples. Posted to " CSS Drop Shadows " by fantasai December 17th, 2007

@KenBW2: Define "box". :) If I have a box with a border and some text but a transparent background, what gets shadowed? If I have a box with a solid background, what gets shadowed? If I have a box with a border, some text, and a background image with variations in alpha transparency, what gets shadowed? Posted to " CSS Drop Shadows " by fantasai December 17th, 2007

Let's not get ahead of ourselves. :) I'm looking for examples of what we want the end result to be, not how make it. Once we know where we're going, then we can decide how to get there! Posted to " CSS Drop Shadows " by fantasai December 18th, 2007

@Chris Greigo: 3. Ignoring box-shadow would let the author draw the shadow in himself. 4. Actually, some of the implementors have had trouble understanding it, too. But the question remains, is this something you would use? Posted to " CSSWG RFC: border-image Issues and Other Topics " by fantasai April 14th, 2009

Thank you for writing a plan of action! The CSSWG plans to discuss its charter at our next face-to-face meeting in March. If groups like CSS3.info, the CSS Eleven, and the WaSP and/or individuals like Jeffrey Zeldman and Eric Meyer could organize a collectively-written list of priorities and submit it to us before then, we could take that into account when writing our charter for 2008+. Posted to " Slightly broken, but not beyond repair " by fantasai December 21st, 2007

It gets updated whenever someone checks in changes. How often that is depends on whether one of us is working on the draft that day. :) Since this is our working copy, most of the changes will be minor: fixing typos, adding detail to a definition, or changing a feature's syntax: each one of these is likely to be checked in as a separate change. You can see CVS's record of what's happening through the CVSWeb view. Posted to " Progress on CSS3 marches on " by fantasai January 18th, 2008

@Nicola, Anders: You'd be surprised at what implementations can do. But the information I'm after here isn't what implementations can do--we have implementors on the CSSWG who can answer that question with much more certaintly! The information we don't have is what people what to *do* with shadows: what end result they want to get. Posted to " CSS Drop Shadows " by fantasai December 19th, 2007

@Ant Oh, ok. That's a given. :) If we add native image sprite support to CSS that will effectively clip out the selected region and treat it as a standalone image. Posted to " Image Sprites Syntax Request " by fantasai October 20th, 2009

@stephanie - We can't use the comma, because it's already used for multiple backgrounds. @boen_robot: Issue 4 was, actually, about backgrounds. Read it again: it's about specifying a second background color, called a "fallback color", that's used *in place of* the regular background-color in the cases where the background image can't be loaded. Posted to " CSSWG RFC: border-image Issues and Other Topics " by fantasai April 22nd, 2009

@Chip Cullen: That feature is already in the draft: it's called background-size. @Chris Griego: All good points. The argument that was given for ignoring box-shadow was that the border-image could contain complex shadows, and box-shadow could be used in the fallback for when the border-image couldn't be loaded. Posted to " CSSWG RFC: border-image Issues and Other Topics " by fantasai April 14th, 2009

Actually, the CSSWG recommends dropping vendor prefixes at the Candidate Recommendation stage (not waiting until the full Recommendation stage). See the 2007 CSS Snapshot for details: http://www.w3.org/TR/css-beijing/#experimental So, for example, features from CSS3 Color no longer need prefixes. Posted to " The Big CSS3 Validation Debate " by fantasai August 31st, 2009

@Chip Cullen: I don't see where you're getting that idea. The property explicitly allows both length and percentage values, and the lengths are certainly not restricted to only px units. Posted to " CSSWG RFC: border-image Issues and Other Topics " by fantasai April 15th, 2009

 @Lensco What do you mean by repetition? Posted to " Image Sprites Syntax Request " by fantasai October 19th, 2009

For box-break, what do people think of 'slice' and 'separate'? box-break: slice; /* Draw backgrounds and borders as if box was not broken, then slice it into pieces */ box-break: separate; /* Draw backgrounds and borders separately for each box: separate, then draw */ Posted to " CSS3 Backgrounds and Borders Last Call for Comments " by fantasai October 28th, 2009

@Lea But in either case, the box will break. It's not like white-space where nobreak prohibits breaking... Posted to " CSS3 Backgrounds and Borders Last Call for Comments " by fantasai October 21st, 2009

You could do both. :) A competition sounds fun, and I think this audience would come up with a lot of cool options. You could even present the best ones that don't win as alternate style sheets! But to do that, you need them to have a common markup structure. So I'd say, start with this design, tweak it until you get a markup structure that's fully functional, request some pre-competition feedback from would-be participants on the structure, and then open it up for design. Posted to " CSS3 .info - Have Your Say " by fantasai March 13th, 2010

Wish I knew about this earlier. I'm arriving from SF later that night; could've booked an earlier flight. :/ Posted to " Standards.Next CSS3 in New York City " by fantasai November 12th, 2009

Doesn't seem like it, given that I promised to show up somewhere in SF Thursday night. Maybe next time. :) Posted to " Standards.Next CSS3 in New York City " by fantasai November 14th, 2009

However, what’s stopping authors from simply submitting tests using [email protected] as is done at the moment? Irrational fears of mailing lists? :) For people who plan to submit many tests, or who want to get more involved, I definitely recommend joining public-css-testsuite and learning to do it yourself. (Like you, James!) But if someone has only a few tests to submit, it's probably better for Gérard to shepherd them; that way they don't get lost or give up halfway through the review process. Posted to " Join the CSS Quality Assurance Team " by fantasai January 7th, 2010

@nitin Not sure what you mean. Most info about the test suite is available on the CSSWG Wiki, if that helps. Posted to " Join the CSS Quality Assurance Team " by fantasai January 12th, 2010

@James Except for css3-namespace, new CR modules all need test suites. :) And yes, contributions are welcome for the same reasons. I think the idea for the css3 test suites is to use a combination of reftests and human-verified tests--reftests where possible, human-verified where not. (Reftests are two pages that are supposed to look exactly the same. The advantage is that such tests can be automated via screenshot comparisons.) Mozilla has some reftests that could be converted for css3-background, but we probably need more. ASIDE: It's already crawlable on the public-css-testsuite archives. Posted to " Join the CSS Quality Assurance Team " by fantasai January 9th, 2010

@Sangar Yes -- the border-radius property does not affect how border-image is applied to the box in any way. Posted to " CSS3 Backgrounds and Borders Last Call for Comments " by fantasai January 27th, 2010

I think I have to agree with most of the commenters here. The new design is lifeless. The combination of sharp-cornered boxiness, high contrast, and grayscale+1 color gives it a very stark look--there is nothing to soften it. The previous design might have been a little too childish, but this one has lost all its playfulness. My favorite design so far was two designs ago (web archive approximation at http://web.archive.org/web/20071013205203/http://... ). It was brightly cheerful and friendly, but still professional. My other comment is that the front page looks like it has too many headers, and the sub-pages' content seems rather disconnected from their titles. Posted to " Welcome to the new look CSS3 .info " by fantasai February 23rd, 2010

@Neils So the exact changes are here: http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/csswg/css3-background/Overview.src.html.diff?r1=1.224&r2=1.225&f=h The text that was there before hasn't changed, it's just been expanded. Do you have any specific suggestions for making it easier to understand? Posted to " Box-Shadow back on the Menu (and other updates) " by fantasai May 21st, 2010

No, it's just an editorial change. :) Posted to " W3C Issues Last Call for Comments on CSS3 Backgrounds and Borders " by fantasai June 21st, 2010

@Brad It does make me think we should reorganize the sections so that 'border-radius' gets its own section titled "Rounded Corners", instead of being tucked under the Borders section. Posted to " W3C Issues Last Call for Comments on CSS3 Backgrounds and Borders " by fantasai June 18th, 2010

@Jeffrey, @Krzysztof, @Brad - Checked in, let me know if there's anything else I should tweak: http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-background/#contents Posted to " W3C Issues Last Call for Comments on CSS3 Backgrounds and Borders " by fantasai June 22nd, 2010

@Alison Foxall Well, what happened was that between the 2003 CR and now, the entire spec has been rewritten. And I rewrote the spec in increments, first by throwing out the entire thing, and then slowly adding sections back in. So that's what that comment refers to. Posted to " W3C Releases Updated Working Draft of CSS3 Text " by fantasai November 1st, 2010

Actually, Writing Modes was originally called Text Layout, not Text Effects (which was proposed as a rename of CSS3 Text). W3C did announce its FPWD publication; I however forgot to mention it on the CSSWG blog. Thanks for reposting this, btw. I look forward to reading any comments on the proposals in the specs. :) Posted to " W3C Release Series of Updated CSS3 Specifications " by fantasai March 1st, 2011

We don't generally use commas to separate values in other values and properties, except when it's a list of the same type of item. Posted to " Radial Gradient Readability " by fantasai November 11th, 2011

@Chris Eppstein We actually are attempting to address this across CSS3: the intention is to shift towards treating the contents of a functional notation as a subset of the normal CSS property value syntax, which will give us more flexibility in defining arguments, especially optional ones. The problem with gradients is that, like the 'background' shorthand, they have too many arguments that parse as the same type. To handle that we need some way of disambiguating. @MicroAngelo You can already do the colors-only shorthand --that's available in both the WD and ED syntaxes. Posted to " Radial Gradient Readability " by fantasai November 24th, 2011