Get Styling with CSS


Get Styling with CSS

When it comes to web design, few people have been more important or influential than Håkon Wium Lie. Working at CERN alongside Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the web itself, Lie is the man who gave it its familiar look by inventing CSS.

Without that bold move, the whole business of web design could have been a totally different beast today. As Lie puts it: “This thing could have been owned by one company. It could have been France Telecom, or it could have been Microsoft. It could have been one private owner.

Instead, we have a web that is slightly disorganized, and there’s a lot of rubbish out there, but it’s also a wonderful place that reflects humanity as it should. And it’s free for everyone to use.”

So how did it all come about? For those too young to remember, here’s a quick refresher. Tim Berners-Lee created HTML in late 1990. HTML was very simple. It didn’t say anything about the presentation; it was all about semantics. “We could present HTML on a screen or in a speech synthesizer, in many different ways, ” says Lie. “It wasn’t tied to a PC screen or a phone screen, it was universal.”

HTML was used to write web pages for the first browser, Mosaic, released in 1993. “That attracted other people, including designers. And they said: ‘OK, this is pretty good, but the font is terrible, and I don’t like the gray background, and I want 20-point Helvetica, red... But they couldn’t get that, because HTML only gave them the meaning of the elements, not the presentation.”

If the web was to succeed in the wider world, Lie realized, designers would need a bridge between those two worlds. “We wanted people to use HTML. But we also wanted people to say something about font size, colors, typography, layout, margins and shadows, and such. Because otherwise, they wouldn’t have used HTML.”

Who invented CSS?

Håkon Wium Lie is a Norwegian web pioneer, a guidelines dissident, and the Chief Technology Officer of Opera Software. From 1998 until the program was offered to new proprietors in 2016. He is most famous for creating Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) while working with Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau at CERN in 1994. As you know, Tim Berners Lee already invented Html (Hypertext Markup Language), and for adding style and giving a handsome look, we use CSS in the HTML document. Here, we discuss Håkon Wium Lie, the Inventor of CSS.

About Håkon Wium Lie Norwegian software engineer (1965)

While working with Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau at CERN in 1994. He proposed the idea of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). As an exhibit and testbed, he incorporated CSS into the Arena internet browser, which became the primary CSS usage.

After joining the W3C in 1995, he chipped away at the CSS details, including CSS1, CSS2, and RFC 2318 (March 1998). Most of these details were created by Bert Bos, who was viewed as a co-maker of CSS. Throughout the following decade, CSS set itself up as one of the basic web guidelines, with a significant effect on typography, style, and availability on the web.

Along with his work on CSS determinations, Wium Lie has been a lobbyist for norms. In 2005, he composed an open letter to Bill Gates of Microsoft to Håkon Wium Lie. He inquired why Microsoft’s Internet Explorer didn’t uphold normal web principles. A couple of days later, when Bill Gates reported that Internet Explorer 7 would be dispatched, Wium Lie reacted by dispatching the Acid2 challenge to Microsoft. Although focused on Microsoft, the Acid2 test was likewise hard for different programs. From that point forward, Acid2 and the resulting Acid3 have been set up as benchmark tests against which all programs are estimated.

History of CSS Versions

We have understood a brief introduction to CSS’s history and learned it has mainly three versions. So, now let’s discuss these three versions of CSS in more detail.

CSS 1

CSS 1 is the very first version of the cascading style sheet and a recommendation of the W3C. It was launched in 1996 with the capabilities of font properties. It is also used for adding color to the background and text sides. In CSS 1, there were text alignment functionalities. It also has capabilities for padding, positioning, and generic classifications. But now, this version is outdated and not maintained by the W3C.

CSS2

The W3C developed the next version of CSS, named it CSS2, and launched it in 1998. It has more features and functionality than the previous version. And now users could use new features like relative, absolute, and fixed positioning. There were media types, and bidirectional text features were also there. This version also saw many revisions, and updates came as CSS 2.1.

CSS3

CSS3 is the latest version of CSS officially released by the W3C, and it was launched in 1999. It has a vast collection of font types, and you can use any font type from Google and Typecast. Also, this version is divided into many modules that make it easy to handle, and it also saves time formatting the web pages. Currently, most companies and organizations use CSS3 and HTML5 for their web development and design tasks. Hence, if you also wish to learn such a skill, then make sure you learn about the latest launch of such technology.

CSS4

There is no such thing as CSS4 as a whole since it is split into separate modules. However, there are “level 4” modules.

Since CSS3 split the CSS language’s definition into modules, the modules have been allowed to level independently. Most modules are level 3— they build on things from CSS 2.1. A few level 4 modules exist (such as Image Values, Backgrounds & Borders, or Selectors), which build on the functionality of a preceding level 3 module. Others define entirely new functionality, such as Flexbox.

So, while there is no monolithic “CSS4” that will be worked on after “CSS3” is finished completely, the level 4 modules can collectively be referred to as “CSS4”.

Future of CSS

Earlier, we used to use only the primary website, which has no visual effect. But after the launch of CSS, web design experts have taken this technology to the next level. Hence, without CSS, websites would not look appealing and engaging to users. Also, in the past, we have noticed many updates and changes to the same. Thus, in the future as well, there can be some exciting updates. But currently, CSS3 is the latest version and allows users like us to add some creative elements to web pages.

Multiple Ways to Define Style

Anatomy of a CSS ruleset

Different types of selectors

References:

  1. peoplepill. 28th October 2020; Available from: https://peoplepill.com/people/hakon-wium-lie/
  2. A brief history of CSS until 2016 — https://www.w3.org/Style/CSS20/history.html
  3. CSS Flexible Box Layout Module Level 1 — https://www.w3.org/TR/css-flexbox-1/
  4. IWT-Module — -Support_Session — https://github.com/MadhushaPrasad/IWT-Module---Support_Session

Follow me on GitHub: MadhushaPrasad



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