Why does the CSS pass-through link from the W3C HTML validator cause the document to be validated against a specification that has not yet been formally adopted ?

When I ask the W3C HTML validator to validate an HTML document :

 http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://web-consultants.org.uk/tests/css-content.html

if that document is valid it offers me a pass-through link to validate
the same document for CSS conformance.

According to the W3C, only the following CSS specifications have
yet reached the status of a full W3C recommendation :

CSS Color Level 3  REC  REC  ℹ⃝
CSS Namespaces  REC  REC  ℹ⃝
Selectors Level 3  REC  REC  ℹ⃝
CSS Level 2 Revision 1  REC  REC  ℹ⃝
CSS Level 1  REC  –  ℹ⃝
Media Queries  REC  REC  ℹ⃝

Why, then, does the CSS validator assume that I want to
validate against the CSS 3 specification, which has not
yet reached full W3C recommendation status ?

A subsidiary question : the CSS validator reports that the
document is CSS 3-conformant, yet echoes only the stylesheet
information contained in the document <head> region; why
does it make no mention of the inline style(s) used ?

Philip Taylor

Received on Monday, 22 October 2012 21:07:01 UTC