Cascading Style Sheets Overview
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Statistics
Authors: Bert Bos, Ian Jacobs, Håkon Lie, Chris Lilley
Specifications
CSS Level 1
CSS Level 2
Timelines:
- Earliest CSS drafts available - May, 1995
- CSS1 first W3C Working Draft - November, 1995
- CSS1 becomes W3C recommendation - December 17, 1996
- First public working draft of CSS2 released - November 1997
- CSS2 becomes W3C proposed recommendation - March 1998
- CSS2 becomes W3C recommendation - May 1998
What Are Cascading Style Sheets?
     If you have not heard the buzz about Style Sheets in HTML yet, you will soon.

     Style Sheets are a simple yet powerful method of allowing attachment of rendering information to HTML documents. The language syntax for specifying Style Sheet information is quite different than HTML, so significant explanation will be required. Matters are made difficult for authors due to the official CSS1 specification from the W3C not being completely supported by the browsers that are attempting to implement this functionality.

     HTML (a derivative of SGML) was designed primarily as a content-based mark up language. The past few years have seen the introduction of many new Physical Formatting and other elements/attributes by browser vendors which has muddied the intention of HTML. One of the main reasons for Style Sheets is to stop the creation of new HTML Physical Formatting elements (like FONT) by browser vendors that specify style information.

Advantages of Style Sheets
  • Increases download speed (using CSS syntax instead of images or sound files)
  • Allows for rendering control on systems other than paged screen
  • Properties are specified using common desktop publishing terminology
  • Easy to author and read
  • Produces nicer HTML markup that is more flexible and maintainable
  • Easy transition from HTML extensions
  • Many new visual control features
  • Easy extension for future capabilities

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