The 27th of september last year, CSS Eleven hit the headlines:

CSS Eleven is an international group of visual web designers and developers who are committed to helping the W3C's CSS Working Group to better deliver the tools that are needed to design tomorrow's web.

Just a few days later, I was - and still am - shocked to read the following, as if the Web had casts [1]...

"Hmmm… and the rest of us web developers who take the time to read, analyse and understand the new specs and help to provide feedback to the W3C and community are what? Chopped liver?" -- Peter Gasston

"Peter… You are, as you say, developers. I believe the point of CSS11 is to get designers involved." - Jeff Croft

And today, I discovered this on twitter:

  • malarkey: CSS WG Draft Charter : I'm resigning as an Invited Expert this week.
  • kplawer: @malarkey what's wrong with the new charter (other than it's not public) that would make you take yer sideburns n' go home?
  • malarkey: @kplawver: I'm not cut out for volunteer work and I'm not contributing at all. It's time for me to go.

Nice epitaph for CSS Eleven, an empty [2] web page that made a lot of buzz but contributed zilch to CSS, a standard from the W3C where all is about volunteer work, in more than six months.

[1] I'll never use the terms "web designers" again
[2] nice ad for the eleven individuals, indeed...