Re: CSS is doomed (10 years per version ?!?)

Orion Adrian schreef:
>>From http://www.grauw.nl/articles/css-faq.php
> 
> "Say, 2 years for specification, 3 years before adoption by all common
> browser engines, and another 5 years before the majority of users have
> upgraded. That adds up to 10 years. Could be better, could be worse,
> but you're talking about many years in any case."

Well, maybe not 10 years but 5 in a little brighter scenario... It all 
depends on the circumstances.

What the market position of the different browsers will be, whether 
Microsoft will continue (standards-based) development on IE after IE7 
and how fast they will adopt new CSS3 features, whether the upgrade 
cycle of users will become faster...

And the standardisation process of CSS3 will probably also go faster 
once CSS 2.1 is done (in Bert Bos’es article about ‘grid’ he mentions a 
year of standardisation process... but again, after 2.1 is done).

It also depends on your environment... If you’re only using a single 
layout engine for which development is cutting-edge, and you don’t need 
to wait for user adoption (for example ‘Prince’, to transform XML + CSS 
to PDF), then much of CSS3 could already be implemented in two or three 
years, when the specifications have matured.

But, be it 3, 5 or 10 years, it certainly isn’t short-term, but it also 
isn’t *that* terribly long... I mean, don’t forget that browser 
development won’t be standing still, and there will be support for 
existing CSS 2.1 and CSS3 goodness, SVG, etc.

And if in 10 years we’ll have a number of browsers which all work in a 
compatible manner and with the entirity of CSS3 implemented... Sure, 
I’ll be happy.


> This is one of those things that I read and didn't real think about,
> but later it hit me.

The main point was to illustrate that suggesting improvements to CSS is 
never a way to fix your immediate problems :).

Maybe I should shave a few years off that number, if it works 
discouraging... It might not be a very optimistic scenario, although I’m 
also trying to be realistic.


~Grauw

-- 
Ushiko-san! Kimi wa doushite, Ushiko-san nan da!!

Received on Thursday, 30 June 2005 06:01:01 UTC