The World Wide Web Consortium Introduces Cascading Style Sheets

Tim Berners-Lee created the Web at CERN, and the initial standards for HTML 1.0 and HTML 2.0 were governed by them. But CERN's main focus is particle physics research, not the Web, and so in 1994 CERN abdicated its role as the standards-setting body for HTML. It passed the torch to a newly created body called the World Wide Web Consortium, better known simply as "W3C." The W3C has convinced major software companies, including Netscape Communications, Microsoft, IBM, Novell, Sun Microsystems and many more, to become members of this standards body. This arrangement provides the software firms with lines of communication to other member firms and to a body recognized as authoritative in the devising and setting of a workable standard for HTML.

The W3C is designed to be a neutral meeting ground, where competing companies can come together to contribute to and comply with future Web standards. The W3C recognized the need to bring some stability to HTML, as the multiple tags introduced during the "browser wars" threatened to introduce widespread incompatibilities into working HTML. The W3C tried to consolidate existing HTML standards, first with the official HTML 3.2 specification, later with the HTML 4.0, and most recently the XHTML 1.0 specification and the XHTML 1.1 recommendation. These specifications adopted many of the HTML tags made popular in both Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator, even though these tags often failed to conform to one of HTML's main guiding principles: that markup should reflect the structure of a document rather than its physical layout.

HTML was originally designed with the intention of displaying the logical structure of a document, as opposed to dealing with the finer issues of formatting text and image layout. This was done because there are many different varieties of computers out there, and they could not be expected to display content in exactly the same way. By defining logical constants as the basis for Web documents, it was left up to the Web browser programmer to create software that could adequately represent these structures in a way that would look best under a particular computer or a specific operating system. In this way, HTML was designed to be as widely compatible with as many computer platforms as possible.

But much of the drive by the browser manufacturers to provide Webmasters with proprietary tags was spurred by Webmasters' demand for better control over the layout of elements on a Web page, similar to what already exists in desktop publishing programs. Over time, however, these extra tags have increased the overall complexity of Web pages, in addition to producing many Web sites along the way that could not be viewed properly when viewed under the "wrong" browser. The HTML 4.0 specification in particular tried to consolidate the existing state of HTML at that point in time, but it was felt that action had to be taken in order to curb the development of further HTML tags by the browser manufacturers.

Thus the idea of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) was born.

CSS is an effort by the W3C to minimize the need for the introduction of new physical formatting tags (such as the font or table tags) by browser manufacturers — chiefly Microsoft and Netscape — by making such tags unnecessary. CSS is a compromise, providing the page layout features that Webmasters want by adding CSS formatting elements to existing HTML tags.

CSS retains much of the logical structure of a Web page while delivering many of the page layout features in a way that is easy to understand and powerful in the effects it produces. Under currently implemented CSS, it is possible to do the following on a Web page:

• specify the exact point size of text

• add indentations to text

• set margins within a Web page

• add new formatting elements to a Web page, such as borders around text

• use such measurement units as inches and centimeters to set precise sizes for text or images displayed on a Web page

• create a distinctive style for individual Web pages or sets of Web pages

• change the fundamental way a tag is supposed to be displayed onscreen

• precisely lay out text, images and other objects using absolute screen references

• set precisely where a background image is displayed, and whether it should be repeated across or down a Web page

• alter the spacing between letters, between words or lines of text, and much more

CSS's long list of features provides many of the page layout and typographical functions Webmasters have been looking for, although it still provides less layout or typographic control than desktop publishing programs. CSS is really a mechanism for modifying how content is displayed on a Web page, and is not designed as a comprehensive layout tool. Despite this, CSS provides Webmasters much finer control over where and how things appear on a Web page than can be achieved using regular HTML.