On Nov 18, 5:03pm, Kim McGalliard wrote:

Of course not. Although 'the average surfer' is more likely to also be an author too - a producer as well as a consumer - compared to other media; how many television viewers are TV producers?

But yes, many are solely consumers. I would not envisage them writing CSS by hand. But then, if they felt like publishing a couple of pages, I would not expect them to write their HTML by hand either. I do, but most folk use a graphical editor to do it. Those same authors will use a graphical tool to create CSS, too. (The first one of these was demonstrated at WWW4 in December last year).

In principle, setting up a user stylesheet need be no harder than altering your default background color or point size in the browser's options or preferences or whatever. The advantage is of course that these "user preferences" get saved out in an open and standardised format - if I visit your house and like the way you have your browser set up, I can take a copy of your "preferences' - your reader stylesheet - home with me on a floppy and use it myself, and the fact that I use a different browser and a different platform won't matter.

That's the advantage, too, of the cascade mechanism. Authors and readers express their wishes in the same language - a CSS stylesheet - so they can share tools.