HTML and CSS Reference
In-Depth Information
It often takes years to develop a specification to full maturity, and a particular docu-
ment might waffle back and forth between different levels of maturity as technological
conditions change and new working drafts emerge. For example, CSS2 was a published
recommendation in 1998; CSS2.1 (remember, a
revision
on CSS2) took more than a
decade to become a W3C Recommendation but finally did so on June 6, 2011! Obvi-
ously, this does not mean we had to wait until June 2011 to use features in CSS2.1, but it
does mean that the specification potentially could change while it was under review. For
comparison, consider this: the W3C's version of HTML5 is currently in Working Draft
status! It's not unreasonable to expect that its progression to Recommendation status
could take a decade or more. However, as this topic has shown, there is so much avail-
able for use in HTML5 today. Its availability is not a decade away, but the specification
(and subsequent implementations) will evolve over that period. You have also seen fea-
tures (the
track
element, for instance) that are yet to be implemented by any major
web browser. If the specification were at W3C Recommendation status, unimplemented
features would not be found (WHATWG's HTML versionless specification takes a dif-
ferent view to this). So, now that you have an understanding of the state of CSS in the
broader picture, what is the state of the next level of CSS, CSS level 3?
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