The Future of CSS 255
Conclusion
CSS is clearly evolving. From its humble beginnings as a way to provide
simple decoration to text documents, CSS is moving toward a future where
it becomes almost a language in itself, capable of adapting to the many
devices that we will use to access the Web in the future.
I’ve learned in my years of working with and writing and talking about
CSS that change comes from unexpected directions. Certain seemingly use-
ful modules or properties will remain unimplemented for many reasons—
whether because of business decisions, resources, or just plain politics. And
change is driven by different sources: from the W3C and browser vendors
to companies like Adobe that want to shape the web in their own image to
the development community that builds tools to meet the demands of web
development. You just never know where the next big shift will come from.
I haven’t covered everything in the CSS3 modules in this book, but
I hope I’ve covered enough to at least make you curious about some of
the new technologies you can start using today, as well as what lies on the
horizon for CSS. I urge you to stay connected to the conversation that sur-
rounds styling elements for the Web, to download preview releases of brows-
ers, to create your own experiments, and to let the browser makers and the
W3C know the results of your experiments. CSS3 has (mostly) been molded
around the desires of web developers, and your opinions and feedback are
vital.
Future CSS: Browser Support
Chrome firefox safari ie
Shapes Yes No Safari 8* No
Exclusions No No No IE10†
Regions No No Yes* IE10‡
Variables No Yes No No
Feature queries Yes Yes No No§
Device adaptation No|| No No IE10†
Sticky positioning No Yes Yes* No
* With vendor prefix
†^ With vendor prefix; no support for minimum value
‡^ With vendor prefix; only an iframe can be used as the content source
§ Currently listed as “in development”
||^ Implemented, but disabled by default
