CSS 3 W3C Candidate Recommendations

Mark Bolton 15/05/04

The CSS 3 specifcation for styling of HTML and XML (including XHTML and XForms) achieved its W3C candidate recommendation on 1th May 2004, it will extend the selectors, properties and values currently implemented in CSS 2.1

The latest version of the specification contains:

•Pseudo-classes and pseudo-elements to style user interface states and element fragments respectively.
•Additions to the user interface features in CSS2.1.
•The ability to style the appearance of various standard form elements in languages such as HTML/XHTML/XForms (and properties to augment or replace some of the remaining stylistic attributes in HTML4/XHTML1).
•Directional focus navigation properties.
•A mechanism to allow the styling of elements as icons for accessibility.

The key elements to the new specifcation centre around the styling of FORM elements with HTML, such as checkboxes, buttons, radio-buttons and select boxes (drop down menus). This will allow styling the appearance of these items via a CSS stylesheet, setting items to enabled/disabled and monitoring of hover/active states.

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