CSS WG Blog CSS 2.1 is a Candidate Recommendation

CSS 2.1 is a Candidate Recommendation

The CSS WG published the new Candidate
Recommendation (CR) for CSS level 2 revision 1, with the firm
intention that there won’t be any more working drafts.

There is no doubt that we will still find (small) bugs in the
specification, but given the type of errors we fixed recently, we have
reason to believe that the spec is good enough for implementers and
users alike. We want people to start implementing and using CSS 2.1
for real (and tell us about any remaining problems, of course).

Given that the test suite isn’t complete yet and our information
about implementations is therefore largely based on anecdotal
evidence, we expect that it will be some time before we have enough
tests and enough test reports to progress the specification to
Recommendation. And even if we get more tests rapidly, we will leave
the specification in Candidate Recommendation status for the rest of
this year (2007).

(There is a mailing list dedicated to testing CSS:
<public-css-testsuite@w3.org> If you’re involved in testing,
or want to be, please join
that list.)

As usual, the preferred place for comments on CSS 2.1 is the
mailing list
<www-style@w3.org>, and if you send something, please,
prefix the Subject line with [CSS21].

We are in particular looking for input from implementers: if you
write software for (some part of) CSS 2.1 and you run into problems,
we want to hear about it.

The changes relative to the old CSS2 Recommendation are in appendix C and the last set of issues solved since the last working draft are in a separate document.

CSS is still growing and we expect to add new features, but further
specifications will be in the form of smaller, partial specifications,
called
Modules. (Several already exist and more are coming.) Those
modules will progressively replace CSS 2.1. But the way it looks now,
that will be several years of work.

Anyway, I’ve treated my colleagues to champagne today, to celebrate
CSS 2.1. I hope you enjoy the new spec, too.

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