Fwd: CSS1-fact.html

From: Lloyd G. Rasmussen (lras@loc.gov)
Date: Fri Jan 03 1997 - 06:03:40 PST


Another long post, but good news this time. The W3 Consortium and
several browser vendors have agreed on Cascading Style Sheets, a way
to preserve the good characteristics of HTML. The trick will be to
get page designers to use this presentation technique. T.V. Raman
also worked on this project. The URL for this info is
http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/Press/CSS1-fact.html

----- Forwarded message begins here -----
Subject: CSS1-fact.html

Stop tagging, start styling!

                                CSS1 Fact Sheet
                                       
Overview

   The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) issued a Recommendation for Web
   style sheets December, 1996. The Recommendation, Cascading Style
   Sheets, level 1 (CSS1), gives Web designers a robust set of tools to
   specify Web page presentation properties such as fonts and colors.
   
Key Characteristics & Benefits

  Enables Author and End User Control
  
   CSS allows both authors and end users to specify style sheets and
   control presentation characteristics, such as font and color. Most
   often, end users will be happy to use the style sheets suggested by
   the author, but sometimes the end user will have personal preferences.
   For example, visually impaired users may want to use a large font with
   high contrast colors.
   
   The style sheet mechanism combines the different style sheets into one
   presentation. In case of conflicts between the user and author style
   sheets, the author will have ultimate control. However, the user also
   can choose to turn off author style sheets.
   
  Smaller, Faster Documents
  
   On the Web today, it's common to make images of text in order to
   control fonts and colors. Images use much more bandwidth than text,
   and the perceived slowness of the Web can in part be attributed to
   this practice. CSS1, while allowing authors to express the same rich
   styles, is text-based so pages using CSS1 are smaller and load faster
   than comparable image-based pages.
   
  Easy Web site maintenance
  
   By linking multiple documents -- even all documents on a site -- to
   one style sheet, maintaining consistent look and feel throughout a
   site becomes much simpler. To change the appearance of documents, like
   altering the background texture, changes only need to be made in one
   place.
   
  Allows document re-use
  
   While HTML extensions often replaced the document structure with
   purely presentational tags, CSS1 attaches style information to the
   document structure. Preserving document structure means that documents
   remain device independent, and Web search engines can do a better job
   indexing the documents. It also allows the same documents to be viewed
   on different media such as print, speech, and television.
   
  New Design Tools
  
   Web designers constantly look for ways to add new effects to their
   documents. While the main focus of CSS1 is to establish the concept of
   style sheets on the Web, it also adds new formatting capabilities. For
   example, CSS1 allows designers to set background colors and images on
   a per element basis, and have text elements floating like images can
   float. Also, among the advanced features of CSS1 are word-spacing,
   letter-spacing and text justification.
   
  Browsers
  
   For CSS1 to gain acceptance on the Web, it's important to have support
   in common browsers. Microsoft supports much of CSS1 in Internet
   Explorer 3.0 and will extend support in the upcoming 4.0 release.
   Netscape has announced support and the W3C expects other browsers to
   follow. Also, CSS1 was implemented in several non-commercial browsers,
   including Arena and Emacs-W3 in 1995.
   
  Editors
  
   Ideally, the creation of HTML+CSS is transparent for the designer. The
   W3C anticipates CSS1 will be supported by HTML editors and are
   actively working with several vendors to ensure interoperability.
   W3C's testbed editing environment, Amaya has an initial CSS1
   implementation.
   
  Converters
  
   Just like word processors and DTP packages now can save documents as
   HTML today, the W3C expects wide support for HTML+CSS as an output
   format. CSS1 allows these applications to preserve more of the
   information in their documents. Already, Adobe's FrameMaker support
   this feature in HoTaMaLe.
   
History

   The Web's main document format, Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), was
   intentionally designed as a simple language that valued document
   structure over document presentation. In 1994 HTML has established
   itself as a universal document format, but it was clear that HTML --
   even with extensions -- would not fulfill authors' demands for
   presentational capabilities.
   
   Work on CSS was started in October 1994 by H kon Lie, then at CERN,
   the birthplace of the Web. In July 1995, work on CSS continued at
   INRIA, the European host of W3C, and Bert Bos joined the project. A
   W3C workshop on Style Sheets later that year made it clear that W3C
   Members wanted to work towards a common style sheet specification. The
   forming consensus was announced in March 1996, and commercial products
   based on CSS1 were out in the summer of 1996. Since then, the
   specification has been further refined by W3C's HTML Editorial Review
   Board. Also, the HTML community has contributed to the development of
   CSS through public mailing lists.
   
Future

   CSS1 defines a common syntax that will be the basis for a family of
   forthcoming CSS specifications. The W3C is working with its Members on
   specifications in the areas of printing, extended layout capabilities,
   speech style sheets and Web fonts.
   
     _________________________________________________________________
                                      

Lloyd Rasmussen
Senior Staff Engineer
National Library Service f/t Blind and Physically Handicapped
Library of Congress 202-707-0535
            lras@loc.gov



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