w3c
Is this project dead? Why are we stuck with modules level 3?
W3C is widely used by programming colleges and course programs to validate students projects. However it's greatly behind the official CSS specifications. Which in turn hurts students and drastically hampers and punishes their exploration and experimentation skills.
In the real world W3C validator is not used anymore for many years for the very reason, it's way behind of the real world css specification implementation by the browsers.
What can be done? Maybe W3C could officially state they should not be used by colleges? Or they notify public by other means that their validation isn't up with the times and should not be considered 100% validation tool?
To be fair, given the speed of CSS development, keeping the CSS validator up-to-date is also quite a challenge, something that likely needs more funding and resources than what may be available.
I love the focus on training and education, but not having a more up-to-date CSS validator is a huge issue in a professional and commercial context. It probably just isn’t as visible because of the lack of attention on conformant, error-free code in general. That it shares with HTML conformance, which gets little attention, too. One thing we could and may need to do, therefore, is also raise awareness for CSS conformance and CSS conformance testing in the field.
Maybe W3C could officially state they should not be used by colleges? Or they notify public by other means that their validation isn't up with the times and should not be considered 100% validation tool?
See https://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/about.html#reference
So, this is the authority on what is correct CSS and what isn't?
No. It is a helpful and reliable tool, but a software tool, and like every software, it has some bugs and issues (and legacy bugs). The actual reference on Cascading Style Sheets are the CSS Specifications.
It already says it's not an authority, and that it has bugs, and points users to the authority (the published specs).
