Andy Clarke Announces the "CSS Eleven" (WD07)

September 27th, 2007

Opening session at Web Directions today was given to Andy Clarke, who proceeded to wrap it up with an announcement of a group put together to tackle the recent issues regarding submission of proposals and recommendations to the W3C. The eleven involved are:

  • Cameron Adams
  • Jina Bolton
  • Mark Boulton
  • Dan Cederholm
  • Andy Clarke
  • Jeff Croft
  • Aaron Gustafson
  • Jon Hicks
  • Roger Johansson
  • Richard Rutter
  • Jonathon Snook

From what was explained, their aim is to work through the CSS specifications and give feedback and examples for some of the more difficult issues, and then provide a body of work to the W3C and/or browser vendors with the hope that it things along a little faster than is currently the case. More details are sure to appear on the CSS Eleven website.

Here’s a snap of his slide:

Posted by Nathan de Vries

3 Responses to “Andy Clarke Announces the "CSS Eleven" (WD07)”

  1. santouras Says:
    September 27th, 2007 at 03:16 PM

    I’m a bit mixed on this really. Whilst css3 is coming along slow, not all vendors have adopted css2 and css2.1. If css3 comes out tomorrow, why should we believe that MS will impliment it in less then 10years, given the time they have taken to impliment (and no impliment) the existing css specification?

    Surely the pressure to push the specifications should be at the vendor, to first impliment the existing specification, not on the working group to publish a new specification that Opera/FF/KHTML will impliment overnight, yet no-one is able to use because 70% of the market are using a browser that doesn’t even support pseudo selectors on all elements.

    I admire his passion and dedication to get these standards pushed through, but surely the effort could be directed in a more helpful direction.

  2. Nathan de Vries Says:
    September 27th, 2007 at 03:58 PM

    @santouras: Very good point. The same problem of getting implementers to get this stuff in browsers exists for both CSS2 & CSS3. I don’t want to be putting words into the mouths of those behind the “CSS Eleven”, however I think they’re trying to tackle a different set of issues, since fighting browser vendors to comply is a battle best fought by someone else. Some of those issues are:

    • The specifications may not be in the best language for the intended audience, and can be seen as ambiguous due to their lack of detailed behavioural examples.
    • Should those same browser vendors who are resisting or delaying the implementation CSS2/3 the right people to listen to when getting feedback and proposals on the new drafts?
    • The W3C can’t possibly funnel all the opinions of vendors, designers, and users. Designers certainly need a unified, clear voice independent of all the other interested parties, and perhaps the “CSS Eleven” can provide that.

    I’m really interested in seeing where this goes. It has flaws, as anything does, however each of these 11 are deeply passionate about where CSS is going and how we’re going to get there, so if this is how they best see their time spent then why not?

  3. fantasai Says:
    September 29th, 2007 at 02:39 PM
    I admire his passion and dedication to get these standards pushed through, but surely the effort could be directed in a more helpful direction.

    Actually, I think this is a very helpful direction to be going in. As I’ve said before, the CSS Working Group needs needs more author perspective, and if this means Andy and others like him are going to coordinate that kind of input I’m all for it. I’d really like to see the CSS Eleven working together with, say, AOL’s CSSWG reps and css3.info’s team to increase the dialog between web designers using CSS and spec writers in the CSS Working Group.

    The specifications may not be in the best language for the intended audience

    Well, the intended audience of the specs isn’t the web design community, it’s the implementors. That said, more examples are better for everyone. :)

    The W3C can’t possibly funnel all the opinions of vendors, designers, and users.

    The W3C should be funnelling the opinions of designers and users as well as vendors, but it’s not doing a very good job of that. Part of the problem is simple lack of participation (not enough representation on the WG, reps too busy), but part of the problem is also that spec-wrangling isn’t friendly to most web authors (how many authors complaining about CSS on their blogs follow discussions on www-style?).

    Asking web authors to comment on W3C specs is like asking the average citizen to comment on the legalese presented as bills in Congress. The legalese is necessary for the law to be effective, but it also makes it hard for the citizen to understand and discuss the various points in the bill. Bringing WG discussions to web authors means reframing the discussion: creating lots of examples, actually drawing the examples (I suck at using graphics software), explaining the necessary technical background to understand the issue, etc. If the CSS Eleven engages the CSS Working Group as well as the web authoring community, they can help bridge this gap—and maybe thereby spin web author opinions into the sort of input that the W3C can funnel.

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