CSS3

The W3C CSS Working Group have released two further updated working draft specifications for CSS3.

The first, released on 11 March, sees a major overhaul of the CSS3 Flexible Box Layout module. The second, released on 24 March, brings several enhancements to the CSS3 Fonts module.

CSS3 Flexible Box Layout

The CSS3 Flexible Box Layout module, first introduced in July 2009, has been almost completely re-written in this latest update to the specification. According to the new working draft;

Compared to the previous draft, the underlying model has changed considerably. In particular, flexibity is no longer a separate property, but is expressed in the value of various properties that accept lengths.

Bert Bos made the following statement in an email to the www-stlye mailing list on 24 March 2011;

Many things changed in this new WD, and many new things are marked as
issues on which the WG would like feedback. Several box-* properties
were renamed to flex-* and the flexibility of boxes is no longer
expressed as a separate property, but with a flex() notation. That
notation can be used on several different other properties and it allows
to distinguish the flexibility to grow from the flexibility to shrink.

Some of the flexibility algorithms and syntax can probably be used later
in tables and grids as well.

The WG welcomes feedback. As usual, please send comments to this mailing
list, [email protected], and please start the subject line with the
short name of the draft in square brackets, as I did on this message.

The updated specification can be found here.

CSS3 Fonts

This updated working draft of the CSS3 Fonts module introduces several new features, most notably;

• Revised definition of permissible unquoted font family names to match latest CSS 2.1 draft
• Added font-kerning property
• Added extensions to font-variant property for supporting OpenType font features
• Added @font-feature-values rule for defining font-specific variant selectors
• Added font-language-override property
• Added font-feature-settings property for access to low-level OpenType features
• Revised font matching algorithm
• Added font-synthesis property

The updated specification can be found here.

The CSS3 Module Status page has been updated to reflect these and other recent updates to CSS3 specifications.