Cascading Style Sheets

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a simple mechanism for adding style (e.g. fonts, colors, spacing) to Web documents. For background information on style sheets, see the Web style sheets resource page. Discussions about CSS are carried out on the www-style@w3.org mailing list and on comp.infosystems.www.authoring.stylesheets.

Complete W3C Recommendation 17 Dec 1996, revised 11 Jan 1999 - [external link]

What's new?

980312 CSS Mill by Patrick Corcoran is a visual tool for generating CSS styled HTML.
980312 Prime Style is a freeware application which helps you author documents with style sheets. It was written by Joseph Hardy, a 13-year old Australian web consultant.
980312 Cascade from Balthisar Software is free CSS1 editing tool
980115 Lewis Gartenberg has released a shareware tool, W3CSS, which converts MS Word documents in to HTML and CSS.
971216 EDF has released CSSize, a tool which helps you convert HTML documents into HTML+CSS documents.
971216 Hexmac has released HexWeb CSS Edit as a plugin for BBEDit or as a stand-alone Macintosh version.
971104 W3C released the first public Working Draft of CSS2. You are invited to review this document.
971104 Coffeecup Software's StyleSheet Maker++ is a dedicated application for creating CSS style sheets.
971024 mBED's Interactor 1.1 supports CSS Positioning which, when combined with a scriping language, allows you to create HTML-based animations.
971020 HTML Writer's Guild has published a CSS FAQ.
971006 Macromedia has released a preview release of DreamWeaver, an HTML authoring tool with rich support for CSS, including CSS Positioning.

Learning CSS

Books

Cascading Style Sheets - designing for the Web is written by Håkon Wium Lie and Bert Bos and published by Addison-Wesley. The book has entered Jacob Nielsen's highly selective list of recommended books and is also reviewed by WDVL.
Web Designer's Guide to Style Sheets is written by Steven Mulder and published by Hayden Books.

CSS online resources

c|net offers an introduction to CSS, including CSS Positioning and the Style-o-Mattic
Prosoft offers a CSS Courselet.
HotWired's WebMonkey has published a series of article on style sheets.
Toby, Jan, Susan and Sue has collected an impressive list of CSS resources.
The Web Developer's Virtual Library has published a brief tutorial on CSS.
Webreview tells you how to write your first style sheet.
HTML Writer's Guild has published a CSS FAQ.
c|net tells you how to get started with CSS. If you have a 4th generation browser, you can try the Style-o-Matic
The Web Design Group has authored a comprehensive guide to CSS. Find out how style sheets can be abused
HTML Writer's Guild has published a CSS FAQ.
Jacob Nielsen has published a guide for Effective Use of Style Sheets
Urban Fredriksson has written a Short Guide to CSS
An Introduction to Cascading Style Sheets by Norman Walsh, published in the World Wide Web Journal. This article can also be found in WebReview
NetscapeWorld tells you how to get started with CSS
Style Sheets: A Brief Overview for Designers
WebSmith Feature: Styling the Web

Non-english resources

A dutch tutorial on HTML and CSS

CSS Browsers

The easiest way to start experimenting with style sheets is to download one of the browsers that support CSS1. None of the browsers below implement the full specification, but releases are coming out fast so this should soon change.

Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0
Netscape Navigator 4.0
Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0
Silicon Graphics has an embeddable CSS-enhanced web browser that are used in a number of applications and their desktop

These sources document the level of support in various browsers:

WebReview's The Browser Compatibility Chart is a thorough review of how the implementations match the specification.
Todd Fahrner documents some discrepancies between implementations -- and a workarounds. Use with care!
Braden N. McDaniel has documented MS IE3 for Windows95/NT
Eric A. Meyer has documented MS IE3 for Macintosh and NS Navigator 4 for Macintosh

Also, a number of non-commercial browsers come with support for CSS:

Arena, previously W3C's testbed browser, is now being developed by Yggdrasil. It has a partial implementation of CSS1 and continues to be a very useful tool for experimenting with style sheets.
Emacs-w3, a.k.a. Gnuscape Navigator, is on the leading edge of CSS support.
Amaya is W3C's Web client that acts is both a browser and as an authoring tool. It has partial support for CSS1.
Lexicon is a browser that is built around perl, tcl/tk and the line mode browser.

CSS Authoring Tools

Currently, most Web Authoring tools provide some sort of support for CSS style sheets. A recent ZDnet article described some of them. The list below is far from complete, but contains (in chronological order) all tools that have been reported to us.

980312 Gordon Blackstock's CSS Style Tool lets you experience CSS by applying a set of predefined style families. It currently only supports Microsoft IE4.
980312 CSS Mill by Patrick Corcoran is a visual tool for generating CSS styled HTML.
980312 Cascade from Balthisar Software is free CSS1 editing tool
980312 Prime Style is a freeware application which helps you author documents with style sheets. It was written by Joseph Hardy, a 13-year old Australian web consultant.
980115 Lewis Gartenberg has released a shareware tool, W3CSS which converts MS Word documents in to HTML and CSS.
971216 EDF has released CSSize, a tool which helps you convert HTML documents into HTML+CSS documents.
971216 Hexmac has released HexWeb CSS Edit as a plugin for BBEDit or as a stand-alone Macintosh version.
971204 Xanthus' Intranet Writer is available in Beta3. Intranet Writer is a WYSIWYG word processor, HTML authoring tool and a Web browser which uses HTML and CSS as the native file format.
971205: Cascade is a comprehensive Cascading Style Sheets editor for Mac. There is also a free version called Cascade Light.
971204 A CSS mode for Alpha, a Mac programming editor, is available.
971204 Anansi is reported to support CSS.
971104 Coffeecup Software's StyleSheet Maker++ is a dedicated application for creating CSS style sheets.
971024 mBED's Interactor 1.1 supports CSS Positioning which, when combined with a scriping language, allows you to create HTML-based animations.
971006 Macromedia has released a preview release of DreamWeaver, an HTML authoring tool with rich support for CSS, including CSS Positioning.
971006: Danere has released a new version of StyleMaker which supports CSS Positioning through a drag-and-drop interface.
970922 The beta version of Symposia doc+ 3.0 from Grif provides comprehensive support and WYSIWYG presentation of CSS style sheets
970912 The forthcoming HoTMetaL Pro from SoftQuad was reported by ZDNet to have "the best CSS implementaion we've seen".
970912 Optima System's PageSpinner is a shareware HTML editor for MacOS with support for CSS.
970908: Microsoft's beta version of FrontPage98 has some support for CSS.
970710:Sheet Stylist is an application (actually an ActiveX control) for Windows 95 that allows you to create, edit and maintain CSS styles sheets.
970623: Astrobyte has announced BeyondPress 3.0 which will convert QuarkXPress documents into HTML and CSS.
970530: StyleMaker is a visual design tool for creating CSS1 Style Sheets.
970415: The Interaction dynamic site management system includes a comprehensive Macintosh CSS editor.
970326: Sausage Software's HotDog editor now supports CSS.
970326: Allaire's HomeSite editor (v. 2.5 and above) now supports CSS.
960302: Harlequin has announced support for CSS in their Webmaker Frame-to-HTML application.
SoftQuad's HoTMetaL Intranet Publisher (H.i.P.) supports CSS. And CSS supports H.i.P's Personal Views
JoyHTML is a shareware Swedish HTML editor that supports CSS. It's not WYSIWYG, but rather source-code oriented. Nice if you would like to see the code without remebering the full CSS1 syntax. And you learn some Swedish as well (Download jh97sv.exe)
DeltaPoint QuickSite 2.0 now supports CSS.
Adobe FrameMaker can now export HTML+CSS with HoTaMaLe.

CSS Specifications

971104 W3C released the first public Working Draft of CSS2. This is work in progress and you are invited to review this document. WebReview has been Digesting CSS2
The CSS1 Recommendation is the specification that defines CSS1.
HTML and Style Sheets: this specification describes how to link style sheets (in any style sheet language) to HTML documents.

CSS history

The work on CSS started at CERN in 1994 and CSS1 became a W3C Recommendation in December 1996. In between, numerous CSS draft specifications were published and they are all linked below.

The earliest proposal (dated 95/10/10) included some exciting ideas that never made it past the brainstorming stage.

as of 12 Nov 96
as of 11 Sep 96
as of 26 July 96
as of 05 May 96
as of 20 Feb 96
as of 22 Dec 95
as of 09 Dec 95
as of 23 Nov 95
as of 17 Nov 95

The previous, more informal, document series addressed both CSS level 1 and level 2:

95/11/1:: Fifth revision
95/10/6:: Fourth revision
95/8/10:: Third revision
95/7/3:: Second revision
95/5/31:: Initial draft specification

howcome

Last updated 14 August 97