A Word About CSS4

http://www.xanthir.com/b4Ko0

by cleverjake • 14 years ago

53 33 14 years ago

sli• 14 years ago

CSS3 will inevitably reach some kind of EOL eventually. If there will never be a CSS4, what will take CSS's place?

mnutt• 14 years ago

It's just nomenclature; CSS3 will eventually just become "CSS" and each module will move forward on its own. And they're really just codifying what was already happening: browsers never jumped from CSS1 to CSS2 or CSS2 to CSS3; they just added support bit by bit.

pbhjpbhj3• 14 years ago

>they just added support bit by bit //

I imagine that, in part at least, is because the standards have taken so long to be codified.

We've been calling it CSS3 and it's been implemented gradually in browsers but it's still a working document and not a finished standard (and now it seems never will be).

The pace of required changed for the needs of web page production and rendering is faster than the pace of the standards confirmation.

If this is just to address this issue then why not have "selectors 3", or whatever, as a part of a point release.

mvkel• 14 years ago

Despite there being obvious confusion over the css4 selectors, I'd bet they make zero effort to rename, thus clearing up confusion for all the folks who don't follow up with CSSWG.

TabAtkins2• 14 years ago

You, um, know that Selectors is one of the few specs without naming problems, right? Its url is "selectors4".

As well (partially as a result of me writing this blog post), we're looking into changing our URL structure, which was originally settled on a decade ago, before we knew how we were going to do this "module" thing.

But hey, nice attempt at trolling.

mcot2• 14 years ago

I honestly couldn't tell if this was a joke or not. Tab is usually spot on and I like reading his blog.

What difference does it make if someone uses the term "CSS4 Selectors" instead of "CSS Selectors Level 4"???

bodhi• 14 years ago

Using an example from the article:

> Others start out at level 1, if they're something new (for example, Flexbox

"CSS Flexbox level 1" is a fair bit less confusing than "CSS1 Flexbox model". It would get even worse if a module moved to level 2.1!

cleverjake• 14 years ago

This is not a joke. This is the same reason why there will be no HTML6. There will just be HTML moving forward. The 'level N' stuff is just for the W3C to keep track of which 'code sprint' (if you will) they are on. The the end-dev, he can just think of it as CSS moving forward.

kevinconroy2• 14 years ago

There's no CSS4 right now, but eventually it will get a version bump or they'll draw a line in the sand or the community will select a new term that will come to mean the new set of functionality (even if it's not an official spec).

HTML -> DHTML -> HTML5

JavaScript -> AJAX

CSS -> CSS2 -> CSS3 -> ____ -> Profit?

est• 14 years ago

Oh god how does Javascript become AJAX?

AJAX is largely part of DOM, it's just some http callbacks your browser provide to Javascript.

alexchamberlain2• 14 years ago

Also, wasn't DHTML just HTML+JS?

kevinconroy2• 14 years ago

I'm not saying that I think that those are the technically accurate terms (they're not). But that's what they're called. It's what sells books and causes articles to trend.

rootedbox• 14 years ago

We know that most browsers couldn't hit a single standing target of a spec. So in order to fix the problem we've made multiple specs that move independently, and at various speeds.

arrrg• 14 years ago

But that’s always how it was. They just decided to make the standards process officially fit what happens in the real world.

ftwinnovations2• 14 years ago

I just wanted to point out that this guys site is all messed up on my iPhone. CSS problems basically. But I'm sure he's really good as CSS...

And what's with all the troll comments on his page? Looked like reddit got there first. I laughed.

TabAtkins2• 14 years ago

If there are any problems, it's because you're using an old browser. (As far as I know.) The iPhone browser definitely counts as "old". ^_^

In particular, a bunch of browsers don't support specifying background-size in the background shorthand yet. It's in modern WebKit, but that hasn't trickled down to mobile versions yet.

ftwinnovations2• 14 years ago

Yup my 4S sure feels old. Sure wish I had a modern browser like IE9 on there. Blast!!

dmix• 14 years ago

Who's involved in the CSSWG? How does one become a contributor? Who are our CSS overlords?

magicalist• 14 years ago

Seriously? I'll even skip the lmgtfy:

http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/members

The mailing list is open to the public. If you do decide to participate, please treat it as you would when joining any long-standing forum.

feverishaaron• 14 years ago

This post exhibits everything that is wrong with standards bodies.

alexchamberlain2• 14 years ago

Why?

batista2• 14 years ago

Nothing of the sort actually.

On the contrary, it shows how by breaking things into smaller modules instead of a monolithic one, they got things moving along faster.

pbhjpbhj3• 14 years ago

>they got things moving along faster //

We can't really be sure of that can we. What we can be sure of is that there's no way to summarise the CSS standards compliance of a browser or to indicate concisely the browser level requirements of a website for a human. This I fear makes designing for the web a case of breaking down and designing for lots of individual UA that meet a list of hundreds of different point versions for different abilities instead of being able to simply design to a standard HTML5+CSS3 and readily see that the top X browsers will support (with some issues of course) the elements of those standards.

Instead of one current standard there are now hundreds of standards?!

goggles99• 14 years ago

Good because I am sick of hearing about it anyway - almost as sick as hearing about the glorious "someday soon" of HTML5.

heretohelp2• 14 years ago

We use HTML5 prolifically. It's a calculated decision, precious few of the people who visit our site/use our apps use anything that doesn't support core HTML5.

unvs2• 14 years ago

Thinking about going that route myself. Do you use html5shiv?

jordaninternets• 14 years ago

Lets call it CSS ∞ then!

A Word About CSS4

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