World Wide Web Consortium Publishes Public Draft of CSS2; Key Industry Players Join Efforts to Enable Designers to Create Richer, More Dynamic Content for the Web.

SOPHIA-ANTIPOLIS, FRANCE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 4, 1997--The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) today announced the first public working draft of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) 2, which adds style to content to produce Web pages. "The release of CSS2 highlights the collaborative process within W3C Working Groups," said Chris Lilley, Chair of the W3C Cascading Style Sheets and Formatting Properties (CSS&FP) Working Group. "By working together to design, refine, and document a new level of style sheet support for the Web, W3C Members show the practical benefits to be gained from having an agreed common foundation on which to differentiate their products in the marketplace." The W3C CSS&FP Working Group includes key industry players such as Adobe, Bitstream, CWI, Electricite de France, Grif S.A., Hewlett-Packard, IBM, JavaSoft, Microsoft, Netscape, Novell, and SoftQuad.

"CSS2 will allow designers to create richer, more dynamic content for the Web," said Hakon Lie, lead architect of the W3C's CSS Activity. "At the same time, pages using CSS will transfer faster to users and are easier to maintain."

CSS gives content creators, designers and readers the power tools they need to realize the full potential of the their HTML and XML documents. CSS2 adds enhancements in several areas to make the Web more appealing for both content providers and users:

-- Positioned Elements allow greatly improved control over

document layout, both on screen and in print

-- Downloadable Fonts give designers the typographic diversity

they require without resorting to slow-to-load images

-- Aural Cascading Style Sheets (ACSS) empower visually disabled

users by applying style sheets to oral presentations

-- Enhanced Printing Facilities improve printing from the Web

The CSS2 Working Draft is based upon CSS1, a W3C Recommendation issued in December 1996. The Recommendation signifies that the CSS1 specification is stable, contributes to Web interoperability, supported for industry-wide adoption by all W3C Member organizations, and provides a solid foundation for CSS2. Key software vendors, including Adobe, Grif, Macromedia, mBED, Microsoft, Netscape, and SoftQuad have CSS1-compliant products; providing the powerful, sophisticated solutions for which Web designers have been longing.

CSS2 is designed to complement HTML4.0 and XML, and is prerequisite for the Document Object Model (DOM), the W3C's platform- and language-neutral interface which allows programs and scripts to dynamically access and update the content, structure and style of documents. "CSS2, in combination with HTML and XML, fulfills the old dream of separating content from its presentation. This is a big boost for accessibility, maintainability and performance on the Web," said Bert Bos, CSS co-architect at the W3C.

The separation of style and content allows a single style sheet to define the style for an entire Web site, thus eliminating the typically repeated duplication of unnecessary presentational information. The result is shorter documents, which in turn, load faster. A recent W3C study showed that when used in tandem, the W3C's innovations in CSS along with Portable Network Graphics (PNG) and HTTP/1.1, can dramatically reduce page download times and ease the load on the global Internet.

In continuing the W3C's goal of ensuring a truly World Wide Web, the members of the W3C CSS&FP Working Group incorporated the expertise of leading experts on internationalization and fonts. To accommodate internationalization, CSS2 fully supports the international ISO 10646 character set, allowing authors to manage differences in language, text direction, and character encoding schemes. CSS can display left-to-right, right-to-left or mixed text, enabling document authors to apply specialized formatting to portions of documents depending on the language they are written in. In addition, CSS2, when coupled with internationalization features, improves the searchability of content.

The CSS2 specification has been produced as part of the W3C Style Sheets Activity. After a period of public and Member review, the W3C expects CSS2 to be endorsed as a new W3C Recommendation.

Please see the testimonials document at http://www.w3.org/Press/CSS2-test.html for additional information on CSS2. Further information on CSS is available at http://www.w3.org/Style/

About the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

The W3C was created to develop common protocols that enhance the interoperability and promote the evolution of the World Wide Web. It is an industry consortium jointly run by the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science (MIT LCS) in the USA, the National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control (INRIA) in France and Keio University in Japan. Services provided by the Consortium include: a repository of information about the World Wide Web for developers and users; reference code implementations to embody and promote standards; and various prototype and sample applications to demonstrate use of new technology. To date, over 220 organizations are Members of the Consortium.

For more information about the World Wide Web Consortium, see http://www.w3.org/

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