Is there an alternative to CSS?

Question

Is there a style sheet formatting language alternative to CSS? Or is CSS the current single language for doing Style Sheet formatting type things?

I looked at the wr

Answer 1

An alternative a long time ago JavaScript Style Sheets (JSSS) was a stylesheet language technology proposed by Netscape , if anyone interested i'll drop you some links http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript_Style_Sheets

here is the proposal http://www.w3.org/Submission/1996/1/WD-jsss-960822 i think this was a good idea but sadly css won, but maybe some parts got integrated with javascript??

Also maybe instead of using css you could use svg for some text effects look at the examples
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/hh410107.aspx
and some animations
http://svg-wow.org/text-effects/text-effects.xhtml
some buttons effects https://www.svgopen.org/2008/papers/86-Achieving_3D_Effects_with_SVG/
here is a cooleer example for styling text you should look at this http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/scalable-vector-graphics-text/

Answer 2

Adobe Postscript is the most likely alternative to CSS. The problem is that it requires Acrobat to view it on the desktop or on the web. It is far superior to CSS and maintains design intent and scales across all devices, including printers, plotters, phones, tablets and just about anything with a Postscript interpreter.

Postscript has a ZERO learning curve, unless you're implementing it for a particular device. It is programmed by millions of programmers, graphic artists, artists, professional printer and even the lowest skilled home computer user. All you need to do is select print or save from any application's menu.It does support linking and field inputs. Is it searchable? It is and PS-based documents frequently appear in Google's search pages.

Although, it can be viewed from a web browser in the form of a PDF, it isn't a native browser language like HTML and CSS. Why isn't it, if it is so easy and powerful? When the web was starting out, Adobe was too shortsighted and greedy open up the language. They wanted to sell licenses to their PS engines and their content creation products. To Adobe, giving away a PS browser was like giving away the Goose and the golden eggs.

Answer 3

You guys are all trying to answer the question from a programmer's perspective. I think the original poster was looking for an alternative which is more graphic-friendly - one that would offer a different concept.

Even if CSS3 gets adopted cross browser, I believe that the CSS way of laying out stuff (inline box, floats, margins, etc) is awful. I am a programmer, but my father is a graphic designer, and I am pretty sure that the layout software they were using 20 years was in some aspects easier and more advanced than CSS.

Answer 4

No (mostly)

If you want to create layouts that work in the maximum number of client machines then you'll have to learn CSS.

If you can limit your users to IE8, Chrome, Safari and Firefox then you can probably get away with CSS2, otherwise you're going to have to learn all the differences with CSS1, along with the myriad broken things - especially in IE5 and 6.

HTML 3.2 includes some formatting tags (such as <font> or <center>) but you can't do much with them.

Why only mostly? - If you can assume that users have either Flash or Silverlight and build web applications for them. Then your layout will be perfect, but it'll need a client side plugin (which not everyone has) in order to work. I'd only go down that route if you need really rich client UI.

Answer 5

Yes.

As everyone else said, CSS is your only real option, but there is another language for "style sheet formatting type things" on the web, called eXtensible Stylesheet Language (XSL), particularly the subset of the spec that became known as XSL-FO (formatting objects).

At one point, depending on who you asked, it was intended to compete or collaborate with CSS.

Answer 6

There is no alternative to CSS right now and this is a Good Thing. The browser vendors, W3C, WHATWG etc have a hard enough time agreeing on a single spec as it is, can you imagine what would happen if there was more than one spec?

Anyway I found that once you learn CSS, you gain knowledge of what particular things break what and either learn to work with it or avoid it.

Hope this helps.