CSS WG Blog CSS Publication Updates September 2012

CSS Publication Updates September 2012

The CSS Working Group has published some cool new stuff!

CSS Flexible Box Module Candidate Recommendation

Flexbox is a new layout model for CSS, and might just be the most densely-awesome spec the CSSWG has produced. The contents of a flex container can be laid out in any direction, can be reordered, can be aligned and justified within their container, and can “flex” their sizes and positions to respond to the available space. We expect this model to be particularly useful for UI layouts.

This module is now officially a W3C-approved Candidate Recommendation, meaning it’s ready for implementation. Significant changes since the Last Call Working Draft are listed in the Changes section and include a thorough overhaul of the examples and intros, to make the spec easier and more interesting to read for authors. We encourage you to check it out, implement it, use it, write tests for it, and, as usual, send any feedback to www-style.

CSS Image Values and Replaced Content Level 4 First Public Working Draft

CSS4 Images builds on CSS3 Images, adding feature requests such as

• bidi-sensitive images
• reusing element snapshots as images
• resolution-negotiated image-sets
• conic gradients
• rules and a cross-fade() notation for interpolating images.

This is an early-stage Working Draft and these new features are extremely unstable (as you might notice from all the bright red “issues” noted inline)! Feedback is welcome as usual on www-style.

CSS Intrinsic & Extrinsic Sizing Level 3 First Public Working Draft

The new Intrinsic Sizing module introduces additional width and height keywords to trigger different types of auto-sizing in CSS layouts, such as:

• fit-content, to force shrink-to-fit sizing on any element
• fill-available, to force standard “fill the available space” block-element sizing on things that typically shrink-to-fit
• max-content, to size elements around their content without line breaks
• contain-floats, to encompass all descendant in-flow content and as well as floats.

These features were formerly in Appendix D of CSS3 Writing Modes. David Baron has written a bit about them on his blog.

CSS Transforms Module updated Working Draft

Transforms allows elements styled with CSS to be transformed in two-dimensional or three-dimensional space. Changes since the last Working Draft are primarily clarifications and corrections, and are listed in the www-style announcement.

CSS Conditional Rules Module Level 3 updated Working Draft

Conditional Rules Level 3 defines the @media (which allows the use of media queries), @document (which allows URL-specific CSS rules), and @supports rules (which enable feature queries in CSS). The most significant change since the previous WD is the addition of CSSOM APIs for @supports rules and feature queries.

We expect the @document rule will be deferred to the next level (due to all the open issues on the interpretation of URLs) and that the next publication will be a Last Call Working Draft, so reviews and feedback are requested ASAP.

As always, please send feedback to the (archived) public mailing list www-style@w3.org with the appropriate spec code ([css3-flexbox], [css4-images], [css3-sizing], [css3-transforms], or [css3-conditional]) and your comment topic in the subject line. (Alternatively, you can email one of the editors and ask them to forward your comment.)

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