Re: W3C CSS Home Redesign RFC

On Nov 14, 2007, at 19:26, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:

> Stewart Brodie wrote:
>
>> Fast, easy access to the actual specification documents is very
>> important to me.  That is why I like the 2.1 link on the panel on the
>> right hand side.

I think access to specs (including drafts) is very important. I'd even  
say the most important thing I'd expect from the CSS WG home page.

> Yet, the linked resource says:
>
> "This is a draft document and may be updated, replaced or obsoleted  
> by other
> documents at any time. It is inappropriate to cite this document as  
> other
> than work in progress."

HTML 5 isn't even at FPWD, but still it is a better idea to use HTML 5  
as a reference on how text/html gets processed than to use HTML 4.01.

> As long as the W3C has such a chaotic system of  
> pseudospecifications, the
> situation should be made very clear. We have CSS 1 (official, but  
> obsolete),
> CSS 2 (official, but obsolete), CSS 2.1 (not official, but taken as  
> the
> surrogate for an excuse for a de facto standard, in lack of anything  
> else),
> and CSS 3 (collection of drafts). Any "quick" links that obfuscate  
> this are
> just dirty, not quick.
>
> And in such a setting, you might just as well start with the most  
> important
> in practice, CSS 2.1, mention CSS 3 next, and CSS 1 and CSS 2 as  
> historical
> (though formally as _the_ specifications).

Authors don't need the latest formal spec but the documents that  
describe CSS as it could be deployed today. That's pretty much CSS 2.1  
and some CSS3 stuff. I like the idea of the CSS 2007 "Beijing" snapshot.

For implementors, QA and early adopters, there should be an easy way  
to get to the latest public spec on a given topic and, until CSS WG  
makes Editor's Drafts public, to the Member-only drafts. I think the  
table from
http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/current-work
should be the on the WG home page.

-- 
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen@iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/

Received on Wednesday, 14 November 2007 19:57:35 UTC