Scribd
Upload
30 views

Foreword: Movie.)

This foreword discusses how CSS capabilities have advanced significantly from the early days of only two browsers with limited implementations and many bugs, to a current state with much better compatibility across browsers and many more features. While CSS is now more powerful, it has also become more complex as new interacting parts are added. However, this unintended complexity also allows for unexpected and emergent features to be discovered. The foreword introduces the book as sharing many fascinating CSS techniques uncovered by Lea Verou, one of the top minds in the field, that will enrich and astonish readers.

Uploaded by

parashar1505
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
30 views

Foreword: Movie.)

This foreword discusses how CSS capabilities have advanced significantly from the early days of only two browsers with limited implementations and many bugs, to a current state with much better compatibility across browsers and many more features. While CSS is now more powerful, it has also become more complex as new interacting parts are added. However, this unintended complexity also allows for unexpected and emergent features to be discovered. The foreword introduces the book as sharing many fascinating CSS techniques uncovered by Lea Verou, one of the top minds in the field, that will enrich and astonish readers.

Uploaded by

parashar1505
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 1

Foreword

Ah, the good old days. Back in the previous millennium, we had just two CSS-capable browsers, and what they did was a
fairly limited subset of a fairly limited specification, so you could fairly easily keep a complete map of what worked and
what didnt in your head. That map included the bugs in each implementation, as they had many errors and oversights,
some of them verging on the comical. Heck, some bugs were so fundamental that they made the browsers layout behavior
completely incompatible, forcing us to come up with a whole army of parser-bug-exploiting hacks just to work around the
differences!
Wait a minute. The old days were horrible. Glad were done with all that!
Things really have gotten so much better in the last several years, CSS-wise. Browsers have, for the most part,
converged on compatibility, and where they are incompatible, its nearly always because one browser doesnt support a
feature that another does, as opposed to both of them trying to support the same thing differently, and usually badly. The
specifications have pushed capabilities forward even as theyve added features that recreate the convoluted tricks of old in
much simpler, more compact ways. CSS has far more features and far more power than ever beforebut, as we all know,
with great power comes great complexity. Its not even a case of intentional complexity: when you combine enough working
parts, no matter how simple each may be, interesting things can and do emerge. (For more on this topic, see The LEGO
Movie.)
But its exactly that unintended complexity that gives CSS the ability to surprise us with emergent features we never
expected, or even planned. There are secrets to be found in the intersections of properties and the bending of values. You
can carve corners with gradients, animate elements, increase clickable areas, even create pie chartsand so much more.
CSS has capabilities that we only dreamed of back when I was but a lad, possibilities beyond anything we imagined. Its
added abilities that I once thought could never be expressed in a compact, human-readable manneranimations, to pick
one example. Its advanced far enough that Im confident there are many, many secrets yet to be discovered. Perhaps
youll discover some of them.
Until that day arrives, there are plenty of fascinating techniques that have already been unearthed, and few have done
more than Lea Verou to find and share them with the world. From her blog posts to her open source contributions to her
dynamic, interactive talks all over the world, Lea has amassed a formidable reserve of CSS knowledge. This book is a
beautiful distillation of that knowledge. You now possess a guide to some of the most interesting, surprising, and useful
techniques that CSS has yielded, a guide compiled by one of the brightest minds in the field. What Lea has prepared for you
in these pages will enrich, delight, andyeseven astonish.
Go forth, learn well, and let these discoveries be secrets no more.
Eric A. Meyer

You might also like