An interview with CSS master Eric Meyer on the upcoming (we hope) CSS3. For those of you who may not be following its progression, you may be interested to know that CSS3 is not one great big spec, as was its predecessor CSS2.

It really means there is no such thing as “CSS3” the way there was a CSS2. There’s no great big monolithic specification called CSS3. There’s just a bunch of parallel efforts, some of which move more quickly than others.

These parallel efforts have been classified as “modules”, each of which progresses on a separate timeline. What this basically means is that the selectors module may reach official Recommendation status sooner than the multi-column module, for example.

Ultimately, this should make it easier for browser vendors who are anxious to adopt CSS3 but may be intimidated by the enormity of the task by breaking it up into more manageable pieces. However, Meyer believes that it has caused a bit of lag in module development time.

My real point is that because of how things have gone, it’s hard to measure CSS3 adoption against what came before. I do think the split caused an overall slowdown in the development of the specifications. No way to prove that, of course, but that’s the feeling I get.

Eric also discusses the effect that CSS has had on some of the major JavaScript frameworks (in particular jQuery) and how developers like you and I can get help to promote the CSS3 effort. A great read for anyone interested in the future of CSS.