Cascading Style Sheets

What is CSS?

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a simple mechanism for adding style (e.g., fonts, colors, spacing) to Web documents.

These pages contain information on how to learn and use CSS and on available software. They also contain news from the CSS working group.

Highlights

News

16 Jun 2017 The 2017 edition of the CSS Day will take place on the 16th of June (in Amsterdam). Speakers include Tab Atkins, Jen Simmons, Rachel Andrew, Håkon Wium Lie and Bert Bos.
15 Jun 2017 Håkon Wium Lie will talk about ‘CSS in print’ and Bert Bos about ‘CSS Grid’ at the CWI in Amsterdam on the 15th of June. Registration required.
19 May 2017 Updated Working Draft: Media Queries Level 4.
18 May 2017 New Working Draft: CSS Logical Properties and Values Level 1.
15 May 2017 Updated Working Draft: CSS Box Alignment Level 3.

For more news, see our syndicator “The Future of Style.”

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Standards & drafts

Some of the specifications and drafts by the CSS Working Group:

Completed work	Status	Upcoming	Notes	ℹ⃝
CSS Snapshot 2017	NOTE		Latest stable CSS	ℹ⃝
CSS Snapshot 2015	NOTE			ℹ⃝
CSS Snapshot 2010	NOTE			ℹ⃝
CSS Snapshot 2007	NOTE			ℹ⃝
CSS Color Level 3	REC	REC	See Errata	ℹ⃝
CSS Namespaces	REC	REC		ℹ⃝
Selectors Level 3	REC	REC		ℹ⃝
CSS Level 2 Revision 1	REC	REC	See Errata	ℹ⃝
CSS Level 1	REC		Unmaintained, see Snapshot	ℹ⃝
CSS Print Profile	NOTE			ℹ⃝
Media Queries	REC	REC		ℹ⃝
CSS Style Attributes	REC	REC		ℹ⃝
Stable drafts	Status	Upcoming	Notes	ℹ⃝
CSS Backgrounds and Borders Level 3	CR	PR		ℹ⃝
CSS Conditional Rules Level 3	CR	CR		ℹ⃝
CSS Multi-column Layout	CR	CR		ℹ⃝
CSS Values and Units Level 3	CR	PR		ℹ⃝
CSS Cascading and Inheritance Level 3	CR	PR		ℹ⃝
CSS Fonts Level 3	CR	CR		ℹ⃝
CSS Writing Modes Level 3	CR	CR		ℹ⃝
CSS Counter Styles Level 3	CR	PR		ℹ⃝

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Working group news

The working group regularly publishes reports on its blog; here are the most recent:

[Photo: group photo in San Francisco]

A part of the CSS WG in May 2016.

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Joining the discussion

The <www-style@w3.org> mailing list is the place for discussing the further development of CSS. (The CSS working group also uses that list for most discussions.) Everybody can subscribe (or unsubscribe, or see instructions.)

If you work for a W3C member organization, you can also join the working group.

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Software

Nearly all browsers nowadays support CSS and many other applications do, too. To write CSS, you don't need more than a text editor, but there are many tools available that make it even easier.

Of course, all software has bugs, even after several updates. And some programs are further ahead implementing the latest CSS modules than others. Various sites describe bugs and work-arounds.

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Learning CSS

For beginners, Starting with HTML + CSS teaches how to create a style sheet. For a quick introduction to CSS, try chapter 2 of Lie & Bos or Dave Raggett's intro to CSS. Or see examples of styling XML and CSS tips & tricks.

Another page also has some books, mailing lists and similar fora, and links to other directories.

The history of CSS is described in chapter 20 of the book Cascading Style Sheets, designing for the Web, by Håkon Wium Lie and Bert Bos (2nd ed., 1999, Addison Wesley, ISBN 0-201-59625-3)

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The CSS validator: Checks the syntax (and more) of style sheets.
Digital Publishing Activity: An Interest Group that looks at how Web technology, including CSS, can be used in publishing, and how those technologies can be improved.
Core Style Sheets: A set of simple style sheets designed when browsers' compatibility was a bigger problem than today, but still useful.
CSS Techniques for WCAG 2.0: A note about the role of CSS in making pages accessible.
SAC: The Simple API for CSS: An interface between CSS parsers and CSS processors.
XSL (Extensible Stylesheet Language): XSL and CSS share many features, but XSL is focused on complex layout tasks, especially for print.
A MathML for CSS profile: Describes a subset of MathML that can be reasonably formatted with just CSS level 2