http://www.w3.org/ — 7 June 2011 — W3C, the standards body for the suite of technologies that together provide an Open Web Platform for application development, today announced new levels of support for Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), the language for adding style to Web content. W3C released an update to the core CSS standard (2.1) to reflect the current state of support for CSS features, and to serve as the stable foundation for future extensions.

CSS has been in widespread use as an Open Web technology for more than a decade, but it took many years for implementations and the specification to converge. The collective efforts of the CSS Working Group, implementers, contributors to the CSS Test Suite, and the W3C CSS community have made interoperable CSS a reality for the Open Web. More than 9000 CSS tests have made it easier for designers to create style sheets that work across browsers, and across devices.

"This publication provides me with an opportunity to congratulate and thank the CSS Working Group, and all of the developers that have made CSS a success," said Bert Bos, co-inventor of CSS and Editor of CSS 2.1. "This publication crowns a long effort to achieve very broad interoperability. Now we can turn our attention to the cool features we've been itching to bring to the Web."

The moments of recognition for open web standards are few and far between, and thus it's important to take note when those moments occur. This is one of those moments: Cascading Style Sheets Level 2 Revision 1 (AKA CSS 2.1) and CSS Color Module Level 3 (AKA CSS3 Color) have finally become W3C Recommendations.