The W3C released Associating Style Sheets with XML Documents as a W3C Recommendation, representing cross-industry and expert community agreement on the first efforts for allowing style sheets to be associated with an XML document, thus bringing a wider range of design and display options to XML authors. A W3C Recommendation indicates that a specification is stable, contributes to Web interoperability, and has been reviewed by the W3C membership, who favor its adoption by the industry. Style sheet development and the separation of presentation information from the structure of a document has been a core W3C work area since its inception. Web publishers use style sheets written in the Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) language to flexibly enhance the display of Web pages written in HTML. Microsoft, Netscape, Opera Software, and SoftQuad have products that support the new recommendation. Other vendors have promised to support the specification in upcoming products. Work is already underway to develop technologies that will allow developers to place the style sheet link outside the XML document itself in ways that are extensible, self-documenting, and that can be validated. www.w3c.org