CSS standard publishing process and css publishing process

CSS standard publishing process and css publishing process

With the wide application of CSS 3, many new CSS attributes emerge one after another, and many unfamiliar CSS attributes emerge. Therefore, you often need to learn new CSS attributes. There are usually not many articles about new attributes, so sometimes you need to read the official documents. At this time, you will find that there are several versions of the official documents. See:

 

When I first learned flex-box, I found that there were many writing methods. Fortunately, the official documents started with the latest ones. However, at this time, I came up with the idea of understanding the CSS standard process. I think I should also understand it as a qualified CSSER. The Knowledge mentioned here is basically from an article by chris coyier on CSS-tricks: https://css-tricks.com/css-standards-process.

The CSS standardization process consists of W3C Cascading Style Sheets Working Group (CSSWG)-W3C Cascading Style List Group, which consists of browser vendors, universities, large companies (google, IBM, etc ), and Independent CSS experts. W3C itself does not set standards. Instead, it serves as an academic platform to receive submissions from group members and discuss standards through meetings. All submissions and discussions are open and transparent, you can see the meeting records on the W3C website. The standard is usually determined to have six phases, two of which are transitional phases:

1. Edit Draft Editor's Draft (ED)

This is the initial stage of standardization. a css attribute or selector is proposed and researched in CSSWG. If the team members agree that this attribute can be officially launched, it will be able to enter the next stage.

 

2. Working Draft (WD)

After the draft is edited, It is the draft of work, the standard design phase. The Group repeatedly processes the feedback from inside the CSSWG and from outside the group. There are two results at this stage: first, the new attributes may be completely rejected due to technical difficulties or other problems; second, the regulations will pass this stage and will be published as the First Public Working Draft (FPWD), followed by several work drafts, it will handle the feedback from the broader community inside and outside the CSSWG.

 

3. Transition-Draft final announcementTransition-Last Call Working Draft (LCWD)

This is the first transitional phase. When the specification begins to consider entering the next phase from the draft Work, a deadline will be set for feedback on some minor changes to the new attributes, LCWD is the last public draft processing after the date.

Note: The most important stages are ED, WD, and CR (as described below). Other stages are not very important.

 

4. Candidate Recommendation standard Candidate Recommendation (CR)

The specification will pass a complete test at this stage. The tester will come from CSSWG and will be selected as the browser manufacturer (Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Opera, and so on) implementing this specification ). To continue to the next stage, CSSWG will introduce two correct implementation specifications.

 

5. Transition-recommended standard Transition-Proposed Recommendations (PR)

At this stage, W3C Global Resource Group: W3C Advisory Committee determines whether the specification will continue to the next stage. This stage usually has few objections, so it is also a transitional stage.

 

6. Recommendation standard Recommendation (REC)

If the specification reaches this stage, it indicates that the specification has been fully considered and can be implemented by browser vendors. W3C and CSSWG will not discuss and process the specification actively and only perform necessary maintenance.

Note: The Recommendation Standard stage is not an ideal state, but a standard grave. the browser will not wait for this stage to implement it, but will implement this standard in the CR stage. Why is it a grave, because after the REC stage, the specifications will stop, rather than become stable. In the REC stage, CSSWG does not focus on fixing new errors, so errors will continue to accumulate. The new version of the specification is already under development, old Specifications have lost the vitality and significance of continuous development. The problems left behind can only be solved through hack, and new attributes can be used to replace them for better functions.

 

When will the regulation be stable? The article quoted a passage from Tab Atkins Jr (a member of the google team, also a member of CSSWG and W3C). The content is probably: The standard stability is basically irrelevant to its process stage. When the specification feature has begun to spread and cannot be changed due to backward compatibility, it is stable. This stage may be in the ED specification stage or CR stage, this is the correct method for judging stability, rather than the W3C standard release process. Speaking of this, the author also mentioned how to use it based on the stability of the new CSS attributes to avoid pitfalls. In fact, it can achieve progressive enhancement and elegant degradation. Here I have to mention a famous website http://caniuse.com is estimated that most people will use this website, it is the gospel of CSSER, through this website, when typing a property, you can quickly find its official documentation and many of the latest learning articles on the resources tab below, and learn about some existing usage problems (issues ). For example, if you type flex, the following tag is displayed:

There are articles from famous websites such as css-trick and github, many of which are relatively new and well-written.

 

There is also A little bit of knowledge here, that is, the name of CSS 3. Tab Atkins Jr elaborated in the article A Word About CSS4 on behalf of CSSWG, the main content is that CSS 3 represents the newly added CSS attributes after CSS 2.1, and there will be no such thing as CSS 4. The following describes the content and understanding of the Article. If you do not want to read the original article, you can take a look at it. It may not be well understood, but it should not be too biased: When CSSWG wants to end CSS 2.1, it finds that "versions" (version) is not useful, once CSS is released using a version, CSS becomes difficult to maintain and Development slows down. Based on the above standard CSS publishing process and the current CSS usage, it is not difficult to think of this. Because the integrity of CSS is not strong, CSS attributes are put forward and fed back to achieve a specific effect, and there is no intersection with other proposed attributes; some attributes have been used without any new updates, and some attributes may soon be phased out. Therefore, it is unscientific to release CSS in the whole version. Based on this idea, CSSWG decided to divide CSS into many independent small modules. Each module only contains one major feature (feature) and can be upgraded and developed independently, why do we need to be divided into small modules that only contain a few features? In this way, the development and upgrade of other features of the entire module will not be blocked because a module contains too many features and is difficult to solve. This idea is determined by the end of CSS 2.1, so now CSS should be sorted by modules, and some levels should be set accordingly ). The rule is as follows:

1. If the module has related content in CSS 2.1, then these modules start from level 3.

2. If it is a completely new attribute (such as Flexbox), it will start directly from level 1.

3. The level of a module has nothing to do with the version of its CSS, that is, whether it is the content of CSS 2.1 or completely new attributes. Because the concept of modules is newly proposed, as long as they are modules, they all belong to CSS 3 (or CSS), No matter what level they are in.

4, may see similar to css4-backgrounds writing, in fact represents the CSS Background & Borders Level 4, that is, 4 represents the Level of the module.

 

Later, I found that Damo's predecessors wrote related articles with more comprehensive content and talked about the browser prefix. For more information, see the following link.

 

Reference:

Tab Atkins Jr. http://www.xanthir.com/b4Ko0#nav

Chris coyier. https://css-tricks.com/css-standards-process/

Desert. css secret garden: is the Web Standard an enemy of friends?

 

 The level is limited. correct the error. For original blog posts, please indicate the source.