What's New in CSS2
Just When You Thought You Were Catching Up
By Eric Meyer
You probably have some passing familiarity with the style sheet as a powerful mechanism that gives Web-page designers more control over the visual presentation of HTML documents. Style sheets go a long way toward meeting the challenge of enhancing visual impact without sacrificing the flexibility provided by structured documents that separate presentation from content.
Although the initial standard, Cascading Style Sheets, Level 1 (CSS1), has been only partially implemented by browser vendors, the W3C is moving forward with development. The Cascading Style Sheets and Formatting Properties (CSS&FP) Working Group of the W3C has published the next level of style-sheet specification, called, logically enough, Cascading Style Sheets, Level 2 (CSS2). Illogically enough, both Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer attempt to support some of the CSS2 features, even though they don't completely support all CSS1 features yet. (See the box titled "
CSS Support in Popular Browsers.") This article provides an overview of the goodies found in CSS2, of which there are many.
Enhanced Properties
Within CSS2, some CSS1 properties have gained new values. The display property now has, in addition to block, inline, line-item, and none, the new values compact, run-in, and marker.
