draco.sg

(This is pretty old, thought I will post it though.)

CSS does not and would not work with versioning. CSS3 does not mean CSS version 3, it is actually short for CSS level 3. And CSS2.1 is CSS level 2 revision 1. Each new level builds on top of the current level. And for the future levels to be interoperable, they have to fix the current level. Before CSS3 can ever be a candidate recommendation, inconsistencies within CSS2 have to be resolved first. This way, it would not make any sense for the specs to have more than one version of the spec.

Modifications to the current specs is painful. Nobody loves to wake up one day and realize that their designs have broken overnight because their favorite browser just switched over to the latest recommendations of the spec. It is a long and hard process to decide what must absolutely be amended, and what could probably be left alone by the working group.

Even adding new ideas to the spec takes time (surprise!). The working group needs to be clear about how a certain element should behave when 2 rules co-exist. A recent experience with the rule transform had me thinking if the containing box would treat its defined width as the new height at 90 degree rotation; how it would fit in the document flow when an element is at 45 degrees rotation–does the text flow around it like it is a block-level, or around the edges like a inline-block or inline element? I am no expert, but would you just imagine the amount of scenarios the working group has to think of before they decide something is feasible? For every single thing they add.

And then there is the waiting period for browser implementations and comments. Even if Firefox, Safari and Opera decide to implement all of the recommendations, we all know there is still one more browser vendor that matters, and needs to catch up.

At least CSS3 is now modularized, so different part of the specs could be in different stages instead of having to wait for the entire specs to be ready. So unless you are actively contributing to the specs, just lay back and use whatever is available. As much as I can’t wait for advanced layout module or a more sophisticated layout module to be a reality, hacking layouts with floats and whatnot is not all that bad.