The World Wide Web Consortium today officially announced Cascading Style Sheets, level 2 (CSS2), as a W3C Proposed Recommendation.
The recommendation indicates that the W3C’s Cascading Style Sheets and Formatting Properties (CSS&FP) Working Group has found that the
CSS2 specification is stable, that it contributes to interoperability on the Web, and is supported for industry-wide adoption. The CSS2 recommendation is now ready to begin the official W3C review and voting process.
The CSS&FP Working Group is made up of industry experts and key industry
players, including Adobe, Bitstream, CWI, Electriciti de France, HP, IBM,
Lotus, Macromedia, Microsoft, NIST, Novell, Silicon Graphics, and SoftQuad.
Cascading Style Sheets, level 2, is a style sheet “language” which is built
upon the CSS1 specification that is already in use. CSS2 enables developers to have more precise control over the presentation of the Web pages they create.
Some of the features of CSS2 include:
- improved printing of Web pages
- positioned and layered elements
- improved Internationalization
- a rich WebFont model, including downloadable fonts
CSS2 also further enables the use of the Web by the vision impaired, as
developers have control over voice, pitch, stereo position, and other
aspects of how Web pages will sound when they are rendered to speech.
The W3C, along with its Members, said it will continue to develop the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) language with a goal of providing even richer stylistic control, and ensuring consistency of the implementation.
The CSS2 spec is a part of the W3C’s Style Sheets Activity. For additional information about Style Sheets, visit the W3C Web site.