Intro to CSS History of CSS

Learning objective: By the end of this lesson, students will understand the historical evolution of CSS and how it has impacted the way websites are built and styled.

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is a language created by Håkon Wium Lie in late 1994 while working at CERN. The proposal advocated separating the structure of a document (HTML) from its presentation (CSS). Before the introduction of CSS, developers had few options for managing the appearance of a website. This is because a user’s browser choice played a substantial role.

The CSS1 spec was completed in 1996, and Internet Explorer (IE) became the first browser to support it. The initial version was quickly iterated on, and CSS2 was released in 1998.

By 2000, the first browser to fully support the spec was Internet Explorer 5, followed closely by Netscape. Even after this, the CSS spec would suffer from inconsistent implementation from one browser to another. IE’s dominance meant many developers primarily catered to it, neglecting other browsers. Building a website that looked consistent across browsers was challenging.

As time passed, the implementation differences became less pressing as Internet Explorer faded into irrelevancy. Today, the spec is managed by the CSS Working Group of the W3C. CSS3 has taken a more modular approach to its development, and different features are managed on individual tracks. This allows for more minor updates and releases over time. This enables the spec to be managed and implemented more efficiently.