Håkon Wium Lie

Håkon Wium Lie (born July 26, 1965) is a Norwegian web pioneer and standards activist. He helped create a way for websites to look better and be easier to read. This system is called Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS for short. He developed CSS in 1994 while working with Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau at CERN.

After that, Lie became the chief technology officer of Opera Software, a company that made web browsers. He held this position from 1998 until 2016, when the company was sold to new owners. Today, he is the chairman of YesLogic, a company that makes software called Prince. This software helps turn web pages into PDF documents using CSS. His work has made the web more attractive and easier to use for everyone.

Education and career

Håkon Wium Lie studied at Østfold University College, West Georgia College, and MIT Media Lab, earning an MS in Visual Studies in 1991.

He later earned a PhD at the University of Oslo in 2006. His work focused on the beginnings of CSS and explained some choices made in its design.

He worked at many important places, including the W3C, INRIA, CERN, MIT Media Lab, and Norwegian telecom research at Televerket.

Web Standards

In 1994, while at CERN with Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau, he created the idea of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). He showed how it worked by adding it to the Arena web browser, the first browser to use CSS.

After joining the W3C in 1995, he helped create CSS rules like CSS1 and CSS2, working with Bert Bos, who helped create CSS. Over time, CSS became a key part of the web, changing how websites look and how easy they are to use.

He also pushed for web standards and asked Microsoft why their browser did not follow these rules. He created tests called Acid2 and Acid3 to check if browsers were following standards.

CTO of Opera Software

In 1999, he became the chief technology officer at Opera Software in Oslo, Norway. He wanted to help make web pages work better on small screens, like on early mobile phones using the Opera Mini browser.

When Opera Software complained that Microsoft was not following web rules, he spoke for the company. This led to Microsoft letting people in Europe choose different browsers.

Chairman of YesLogic

Since 2004, Wium Lie has led YesLogic, a company that uses CSS to turn web pages into PDF documents with beautiful layouts.

Political and civic activities

In 2005, Håkon Wium Lie began a campaign called Stans.no to stop advertising towers on public sidewalks in Oslo. After a lawsuit, the city bought and removed these towers, and Stans.no kept working against other public ads.

Håkon Wium Lie has supported many causes. In 2008, he helped bring 100 special laptops to his home to support a project for children in developing countries. In 2012, he helped start the Pirate Party of Norway and ran as their candidate in elections in 2013 and 2019. He has also helped fund cultural projects and started an online newspaper in 2017 to give a voice to important writers and speakers.

Personal life

Håkon Wium Lie lives in Oslo, Norway. In his hometown, he has worked on projects to protect public spaces from too many tall buildings and advertisements. He also enjoys woodworking and runs an organic farm.

Awards and recognition

Håkon Wium Lie was recognized as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under 35 by the MIT Technology Review TR100 in 1999. In 2001, he was honored as a Technology Pioneer at the World Economic Forum in Davos. In 2017, he gave a keynote speech at the WeAreDevelopers Conference, discussing his work on CSS and how it has grown with the web over time.