After months of data scarpping and compiling data, the history of CSS specfications was printed live over the course of 4 hours. 

What if we imagine the web as our endless fashion show? Access to the runway is provided by different browsers and within it, countless websites displaying themselves. Most of us who browse the web only watch the websites walk by, take what we want from them and leave. We can all watch the runway show and get lost in a sea of websites. Or we can start creating them for ourselves. Anyone who knows how to stitch two pieces of cloth can join the runway with their own outfits. Of course it is possible to delve deeper, to create one outfit after another, find new ways of stitching them together, new materials, innovative designs... The only caveat of the internet Fashion Show is that there is only warehouse to acquire the materials used for the outfits. They make the needles, threads and fabrics we we have to use, and in so doing so they design the materials of the net. That place is called the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). 

The Runway Show is a big industry, after all aren't our lives draped in the clothes of the Web? The tools we use to stitch and style a websites is a game many desire to influence. So there are loads of organizations contributing and funding the W3C in the form of members. Any organization can be a member, as long as they  can overcome the costs of joining. There are only two ways one can take part in the decision making processes on which new tools will be available for the developers. You can join either as a members' employee, e.g. Google employees, or you can be an 'Invited Expert'. Invited Experts are individuals passionate about CSS and the web, and either work for free, or when interests align, are funded by external companies and organisations. However, our data has no way of showing when such cases arise as they are in no obligation to declare it. 

This process of designing new features for CSS consists of rigorous sessions, each session concluding with a draft. The journey starts with 'Editor's Draft' and keeps on going through different meetings as various 'Working Drafts' until it is perfected for designers use, and presented as a 'Recommendation'. Theoretically these Specifications are open for the public to see and follow, so that dressmakers can chime in and those who only browse, can understand the process if they ever wish to. That is, if they can find them. The specifications date back to 1994 and are scattered around the W3C's website, sometimes only available through the links buried in other documents. There is no API and very limited search options. This project is an attempt to collect some of this data in one place, so that we can find some clues regarding the authorship of CSS, in other words 'A CSS WHODUNIT'. 

Now you know all the people and the companies who influenced CSS through the years. How close are we in solving the puzzle? Even though it seems that the W3C hold the power when it comes to authoring the tools of web building, at the end of the day all they present are Recommendations. It it is the browsers (Chrome, Safari, Firefox etc) who choose whether or not to support arising features, and even to implement their own unaligned features. But when it all started, the people who founded the Fashion Show and built the original materials factory just wanted the tools to be simple, accessible, and transparent. It was designed for the free travel of all information, not for Oligopoly, commerce and control.  Now we find ourselves trying to solve a murder mystery, and whichever arm we trace back seems to be attached to the same few companies.