SXSW Panel: A Decade of Style

The first panel I decided to select was the A Decade of Style panel which was moderated by Eric Meyer and included Molly Holzschlag, Chris Wilson and Douglas Bowman. It felt more like a "This is what I have done, now bow down" rather than a "this is what happened in the last decade." It started off well with Eric's year by year chart with CSS availability but quickly moved into a "this is me" type discussion. Molly seemed to dominate most of the discussion, followed by Eric. I would have enjoyed a walk through time, here is what was done in 99, 00, 01, etc. Here is how xyz site pushed the envelope. Below are the questions Eric posed to the panel plus the questions asked by the audience.

• Starts off with a discussion about when they first came in contact with CSS. What's interesting is that I was doing it when they were, just outside of HTMLCenter, never really became public about it. Damn, I coulda been a star :)
• What made you stick with CSS? Concensus around beauty. Molly had to get into it because people were asking her about it.
• What's your favorite CSS property? One said Margin, Molly likes display property, another guy likes text-decoration: blink.
• How did CSS survive its first five years? Molly says just the idea helped me to hang on to the hope for a better structured document with more flexibility. Another one says sep. style from content was a great concept.
• They all say the CSS Zen Garden was the best moment in CSS History. Meyer says IE5 Mac was another great moment in CSS history.
• Who have we forgotten? Todd Farner, Molly mentions blue robot guy, Eric Costello from glish, Owen Briggs from Box something.
• What's the biggest piece missing in CSS? Chris a full test suite, someone in the audience said table, molly says column-based design, another one says variables and constants.
• Has the CSS Working Group lost its way? Molly thinks they are getting smarters by bringing in designers like Andy Clarke. It's a challenging mission and anytime the spec does not specify enough in detail, then CSS 2.01 still does this. Molly believes the W3C has lost its way because its the same people year after year.
• What's the hardest part of CSS? Compatibility, hardest part of CSS is actually using CSS but not being able to use it well.
• How does designing for CSS differ from designing in general? CSS is an implementation tool not a design tool.
• What does the future hold? Layout, variables and constants..

Audience questions:

• Should a web designer understand CSS just as a print designer needs to understand paper.
• Do you code for least compliant and add or most compliant and back out. Most panelists are saying they code for most compliant and then back out.
• Student asked me recently, why is everything square? CSS is based on a box model that's why you get boxes.