Beyond Browsers

The CSS saga isn't only about Web browsers. Many people outside of the few that program Web browsers have made important contributions to CSS over the past years. Some of them are mentioned in the Preface and we use the few remaining paragraphs of this book to expand on some of them.

The CSSI test suite was an landmark development for CSS and W3C. When the first two CSS implementations came out and could be compared, we realized there was a problem. You could not expect the style sheet tested only in one browser to work in the other browser. To rectify the situation, Eric Meyer with help from countless other volunteers developed a test suite that implementors would test against while there still was time to fix the problems. Todd Fahrner created the "acid" test which became the ultimate challenge. See Figure 18.3.

Figure 18.3. The acid test.

Brian's "index dot CSS" is available from http://www.blooberry.com/indexdot/css/index.html

When a test suite is available, someone must do the testing. Brian Wilson has done a remarkable job of testing CSS implementations and making the results available on the Web.

Without compelling content, CSS hasn't served its purpose. Dave Shea created the CSS Zen garden to show fellow graphics artists why CSS should be taken seriously. He, along with the many people who created submissions, showed people how to use CSS creatively.

The Web site for the Prince formatter is http://www.yeslogic.com

The Web has been trapped on the desktop for too long. Making it available on mobile phones is one important escape. Michael Day and Xuehong Liu have shown us another way out: The Prince formatter converts HTML and XML documents to PDF and is entirely based on CSS. This product enabled the authors of this book to abandon traditional word processors and use the same standards we preach. This book has been written entirely in HTML and CSS.