Opera, Microsoft and our CSS which stay behind

Let’s see what is what: W3C is the association of people and companies who are responsible for the evolution of the Web. W3C’s CSS Working Group is another team of people who take care of CSS and determine the new editions of the platform. This group consists of W3C developers and huge companies such as Adobe, Mozilla, Opera, Apple, IBM, Microsoft, Google. There ‘s no question about the importance of the group.

What really happens in there? Since yesterday there were no designers participating in the group. It sounds ridiculously dump. We are talking about people who implement what the group determines. An equivalent would be a car company which doesn’t give cars to drivers in order to test the new models.
The second thing is such companies can’t get organized easily and work together towards a common target. We are currently using CSS 2.0 and the question is when are going to move to level 2.1? Apparently, not soon.

The result of all these frictions is designers who remain still and keep developing websites the typical way whereas evolution is one step away.

The Opera & Microsoft battle

Opera now publishes an antitrust letter against Microsoft. The letter affords the whole Web community and in there Opera accuses Microsoft for harming Web standards and the whole industry by not focusing on what the group tries to implement and by keeping Internet Explorer a part of Windows. You don’t have to be an expert to see that this letter is a bomb which is going to spoil the whole effort.

Obviously, Opera is theoretically correct. All versions of Internet Explorer, except for the latest one, are far from good. This won’t make Opera create better products and the already slow moving CSS Working Group will stop for good. Furthermore, it is unfair in my eyes. How will Microsoft take it? Will Microsoft guys hug the Opera ones for their tenderness? I don’t think so. I only wish Microsoft ignores Opera.

For all the people who use CSS in their everyday routine this battle is one more car crash which leaves us behind. We do only need the CSS 2.1 specification but also the CSS 3.0, the way Jina Bolton described it in an extraordinary presentation (.pdf file - 7.9MB).

Now what?

Andy Clarke an invited expert in CSS Working Group went further and requested the disbandment of the whole group. He also talked about a new group consisted not by browser vendors but by people who care about the evolution of CSS because this is central to the success of their profession. It is difficult to say if this is going to work really.

How easy is to say “OK, I am going to disband this group and create a new one” when the current participants are the Web? How easy is to leave e.g. Google people out now and ask them later to support the new standards you made without them? It is important to understand that we don’t only need such companies but we also want them in because they are good.

As designers and developers we do need a helping hand in both the areas of creativity (call me CSS, XHTML etc.) and browser’s support. The current form of CSS Working Group needs an overhaul. It sounds rational enough to me to think of a new, smaller and much more flexible team consisting of designers, developers and browser vendors. I am afraid that what is rational is at the same time the most complicated thing in the world.