Cascading Style Sheets 2 Specifications out now!

With the Cascading Style Sheet Level 1 (CSS1) specifications now at Recommendation level it's time to look at the new Cascading Style Sheet Level 2 (CSS2) working draft which is based on CSS1.

CSS2 contains very little that is really new but it has an important place as a 'tidy up' for the CSS1 specification. CSS1 was the first standard for creating the equivalent of word processing templates (on the Web called style sheets) for Web pages. These allow Web authors to both enhance and standardise the formatting of Web documents.

Much of CSS2 is aimed at tightening up those parts of CSS1 that left too much open to interpretation. What users should see from CSS2 is that browser makers will use it to 'catch up' and fully implement CSS2 (becoming backwardly compatible with CSS1 in the process), as the specification is now easier to interpret and implement.

CSS2 is still in its early days - it is still a draft document and none of the mainstream browsers as yet support it. However, as it is designed to be backwardly compatible with CSS1 browsers that support CSS1 ^and should gracefully degrade any CSS2 specific source.

CSS2 brings a number of disparate style specifications together in one place. In the documents that make up CSS2 you'll find specifications for producing Aural Cascading Style Sheets (ACSS) which allow the creation of style sheets for oral presentations using a combination of speech synthesis and audio icons. There are also improved facilities for printing information on 'paged media' such as paper, transparencies and so on. This means that users will be able to print Web pages which look as good on paper as they do on the screen. This will, in time, blur the line between the different delivery modes of screen and print and widen the potential of the Web to distribute print material.

Other CSS2 enhancements that make the Web more appealing for users are those that give better support for document layout both on screen and in print by giving developers the ability to position elements more reliably on the screen. Fonts that download with a page will allow designers to use more diverse fonts on their pages and these can be displayed as text rather than slow loading graphics, thus increasing delivery speed.

CSS2 takes Web development one step closer to a scenario where Web content can be separated from its presentation. This is attractive as it makes maintaining a Web site easier and improves overall Web performance. For example a single style sheet can now define the style for an entire Web site, reducing unnecessary duplication and making overall changes to a site as easy as altering a single style sheet. This helps make Web content re-useable, because it is separate from its presentation. It allows improvements and additions to be made to a Web site without the corresponding high cost of creating the surrounding source to present it neatly.

At an international level, CSS2 supports the international ISO 10646 (Unicode) character set which makes it easier for Web authors to manage differences in language and text direction. CSS can display text from left-to-right, right-to-left or a mix of directions which allows for development of pages which support a variety of languages and this international character support will also improve the searchability of Web content.

One of the unsung benefits of the WC3's work is in creating an open standard for the Web. Like HTML 4.0, the CSS2 specification is platform independent and not tied to any one software or hardware vendor. In fact the working group responsible for CSS2 reads like a 'who's who' of the computer industry and includes key players such as Bitstream, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, JavaSoft, Microsoft, Netscape and Novell.

Web resources
Find the W3C's CSS2 Specification Release at:
http://w3c.org/TR/WD-CSS2/