CSS has come full circle

@CSSence
🗣 Matthias Zöchling

CSS in Graz
🌐 Graz, Austria

CSS was first proposed by Håkon Wium Lie on 10 October 1994. At the time, Lie was working with Tim Berners-Lee at CERN. Several other style sheet languages for the web were proposed around the same time, and discussions on public mailing lists and inside World Wide Web Consortium resulted in the first W3C CSS Recommendation (CSS1) being released in 1996. In particular, a proposal by Bert Bos was influential; he became co-author of CSS1, and is regarded as co-creator of CSS.

selector {
	property: value;
}

Chapter 1: Chaos

Three tests, Acid1, Acid2, and Acid3, have been published as part of the Web Standards Project (WaSP).

WaSP as been the grassroots coalition fighting for standards which ensure simple, affordable access to web technologies for all.

We used tables for layout, turned fonts into images, used JavaScript for …

Or, we did everything in Flash.

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We used floats for layout, fought browser inconsistencies, spent way to much time creating image sprites.

HTML <font> and <center>

CSS hacks * + html b { zoom: 1; *padding: 1px; }

-khtml-property: …
-ms-property: …
-moz-property: …
-o-property: …
-webkit-property: …
property: …

Internet Explorer has been with us for almost three decades.

Chapter 2: Hope

Let’s take a trip back 20 years. With memories the dot-com boom and bust looming over the industry, those of us lucky enough to still have work hunkered down and kept using the hacky table layouts and font tags that typified web development in the late 90’s. The industry stagnated, and by 2003 CSS still wasn’t being using beyond controlling basic fonts and colours. Those who understood the capabilities of CSS were rarely designers, and designers largely hadn’t embraced it yet. And so the widespread perception of CSS was as a language capable only of boxy and boring design. Few understood it was capable of more, and those who did were unable to convince their clients and their teams to take the necessary risks required to use it.

The text we’ve just been presented is taken from the About page of the CSS Zen Garden.

CSS Zen Garden brought five designs at launch.

The Responsive Web Design article by Ethan Marcotte, published on May 25, 2010, has several hero images, but only one is shown, and which one gets chosen depends on the screen size.

In 2019, Jen Simmons first talked about Intrinsic Web Design, which is the new norm.

  • Interop
  • Baseline Baseline distinguishes between Limited Availability, Newly Available, and Widely Available.

Chapter 3: Interplay

CSSence.com homepage, June 2025.

CSSence.com settings page, revealing additional page styles.

CSSence.com homepage in Elegant page style.

Again in Elegant page style, but on small viewport.

Elegant page style, but on small viewport in dark color scheme.

Elegant page style, but on larger viewport in dark color scheme.

Elegant page style, but on tiny viewport, could be a smartwatch.

Elegant page style, but on tiny circular viewport.

CSSence.com homepage in Elegant page style, with Forced Colors Mode override with light text on dark background.

Same as before, but Forced Colors Mode override with dark text on light background.

CSSence.com homepage in Advanced page style.

Again in Advanced page style, but in dark color scheme.

CSSence.com homepage in Basic page style.

Again in Basic page style, but in dark color scheme.

CSSence.com homepage with no page style.

Again without page style, but in dark color scheme.

CSSence.com homepage in print style.

Again the print style, but in landscape orientation.

CSSence.com homepage on the text-based Lynx browser.

…

Presenting the same content over and over again sounds very much like the CSS Zen Garden.

Next Chapter: ?

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