Re: When will CSS rule?

On Nov 18,  5:03pm, Kim McGalliard wrote:

> 5.  Do you think the average surfer is going to take the time to learn
> enough about CSS to override an author's sheet?

Of course not. Although 'the average surfer' is more likely to also be
an author too - a producer as well as a consumer - compared to other
media; how many television viewers are TV producers?

But yes, many are solely consumers. I would not envisage them writing
CSS by hand. But then, if they felt like publishing a couple of pages,
I would not expect them to write their HTML by hand either. I do, but
most folk use a graphical editor to do it. Those same authors will use
a graphical tool to create CSS, too. (The first one of these was
demonstrated at WWW4 in December last year).

In principle, setting up a user stylesheet need be no harder than
altering your default background color or point size in the browser's
options or preferences or whatever. The advantage is of course that
these "user preferences" get saved out in an open and standardised
format - if I visit your house and like the way you have your browser
set up, I can take a copy of your "preferences' - your reader stylesheet
- home with me on a floppy and use it myself, and the fact that I use
a different browser and a different platform won't matter.

That's the advantage, too, of the cascade mechanism. Authors and readers
express their wishes in the same language - a CSS stylesheet - so they
can share tools.


-- 
Chris Lilley, W3C                          [ http://www.w3.org/ ]
Graphics and Fonts Guy            The World Wide Web Consortium
http://www.w3.org/people/chris/              INRIA,  Projet W3C
chris@w3.org                       2004 Rt des Lucioles / BP 93
+33 (0)4 93 65 79 87       06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France

Received on Monday, 18 November 1996 18:17:40 UTC