CSS3: Someday?

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Already, significant work is being performed on defining CSS Level 3 ”despite the fact that no browsers have been implemented that cover CSS2 completely and some browsers still have problems with areas of CSS1 for that matter. Readers interested in following the current progress of CSS3 should visit the W3C site's section on CSS (http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/). A quick perusal of the current activities at the time of this edition's writing indicates that CSS3 will break the CSS specification up into modules so that it can be more easily adapted to suit a variety of situations. CSS3 also promises changes to add support for international languages, ruby text, and vertically flowing text, and to improve support for tables, print output, color correction, downloadable fonts, and integration with other technologies such as Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), MathML, or SMIL (Synchronized Multimedia Interchange Language). CSS3 will also address the increased integration between XHTML, style sheets, and scripting languages through ideas like BECSS (Behavioral Extensions to CSS).

If you look at the working drafts that are close to recommendation stage at the time of this edition's writing, it is obvious that CSS3 will add a richness that makes CSS2 look somewhat simple. For example, no longer will you be limited to select the first-child or basic siblings in a tree structure, but arbitrary children can be specified. Attribute selectors become even richer in pattern matching capabilities and selectors can also examine the enclosed content in a tag. The CSS3 text specification promises improved layout even providing the ability to fully control kerning in a document. All the details that print designers would want, down to the tiny details of controlling the type of underline style and color, are promised by CSS3. But don't hold your breath for these features; they are probably a long way off. Interestingly some of the more important features may see the light of day first as browser-specific extensions. The next section covers some properties that are implemented by browser vendors , but that may or may not be part of any eventual CSS specification.

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