Web Standards Evolve with CSS Regions, Available on Adobe Labs
This week, as we celebrate open source and web standards at Google I/O, we are releasing a prototype of CSS Regions on Adobe Labs. CSS Regions allow designers to build sophisticated, magazine-style layouts on the Web. Previously, intricate print-style layouts seen in magazines, newspapers and textbooks could not be duplicated in website form. CSS Regions are a proposed addition from Adobe to the CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) Web standard, which is at the core of website formatting. We first proposed CSS Regions in March to the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) and the CSS Working Group and there is now ongoing work with the CSS Regions Module Editor’s Draft and the CSS Exclusions Module Editor’s Draft.
Initially we are working to bring CSS Regions to Webkit, because we would like to see the open Web platform offer even more sophisticated document layout features than today. Adobe engineers have developed a prototype implementation of CSS Regions in a customized version of WebKit, now available on Adobe Labs for developers to experiment with. Also live are several samples showing CSS Regions in action. Developers can access the prototype and get more information at http://www.adobe.com/go/cssregions
The broader umbrella of the Open Web Platform (HTML5, CSS3 and SVG, among other components) is an evolving set of specifications that we’ve been actively involved in. With CSS Regions, we are continuing the commitment to actively improve and contribute to Web standards and work with the community to develop the best solutions. On the heels of the enhanced support for HTML5, JQuery, Webkit and PhoneGap in CS5.5, we are continuing to adapt to a rapidly changing technological landscape and invest engineering resources in both Flash and the Open Web Platform.
We encourage developers to experiment with CSS Regions and provide feedback to Adobe and the CSS Working Group. Users can provide comments via the www-style mailing list to request features, make comments and report problems. We look forward to collaborating with the Webkit community on how to best bring a CSS Regions implementation to the WebKit main branch. As always, our goal with putting this experimental technology on Adobe Labs is to engage our customers and the community and really find out how they like certain capabilities, what other functionalities they want, and better understand their day-to-day pain points to learn how we can best support them with the tools they need.