The W3C has just released a working draft of a NEW box model for CSS, to complement the already existing box models of CSS 2.1/3.

Called the “Flexible Box Layout Module” it is practically ripped straight out of the user interface methodology of Mozilla-based projects such as Thunderbird and Firefox called XUL.

My co-worker had some smarmy comments to make about it, which realistically are not out of line:

Me

http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/WD-css3-flexbox-20090723/

New CSS box model based on XUL

Bill

working draft. that means we can use SOME parts of it, broken, in IE in 2013.

Me

Bill

But yeah, it looks like the dialog code from XUL.

Wait… LOVE the authors list… EVERYONE but Microsoft. LOL

While the world moves on ahead, something in our guts tells us that Micro$oft is going to continue minding their own business, to the detriment to the web as a whole. IE6 is almost dead, but its descendants keep tilling much of the same ground their forebear left behind.

Regardless of MS, having more box model to play with is sweet. You want to be able to make operating systems redundant? The ability to create stable and usable User Interfaces is key. That’s why I love my Macs. The UI is peerless.

Giving the entire web the ability to make UI similar to Firefox is certainly a Good Thing™