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Incomplete List of Mistakes in the Design of CSS

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Re: Incomplete List of Mistakes in the Design of CSS

#51

Post by gopowerranger »

Ygg2 wrote: post #45
gopowerranger wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you seriously trying to throw IE6 into this to attempt to prove your point? We aren't talking about antiquated browsers no one should be using today.

Are you seriously trying to deny IE6 isn't there in the wild? It was a job I had to do. I was paid to do it. It was awful. This happened circa 2013. For contrast I now support IE8 and IE9. Without jQuery. It's bad. Really, really bad. Like, there isn't indexOf on Array and asking for polyfill is forbidden.

You're one-off job is nothing to be holding up as an example of current web development. My company has 23 active clients and I can't tell you the last time, many years ago, we saw IE8 in the visitors logs much less anything less than that.

Re: Incomplete List of Mistakes in the Design of CSS

#52

Post by wodenokoto »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #31
wodenokoto wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your latex equation, you are missing where the data goes. The idea for html/css/js is that data goes into the html, layout and styling into CDs and interactivity is defined in JavaScript. That makes sense. The problem is that we never got anything close to that.

Hmm... I don't see any conceptual reason why separating those things should require completely different languages, though.

Nobody bats an eye when you use Python for logic, sql for querying your database and regex for searching text. Unlike the front end, there are ample opportunities for "uniting" the backend in one language, yet nobody really seems to bother.

I speculate that it's because these languages are better at certain things, just like having a non-executable language for data, helps keep the data, data only (cue angry lispers), and facilitates easier writing of prose in a mark-up language than a real programming language could facilitate. Just look at markdown.

More over, we invented JSON, rather than just sending JS files between browser and server.

Re: Incomplete List of Mistakes in the Design of CSS

#53

Post by antod »

kayamon wrote: post #21

This doesn't even address the fundemantal design flaw with CSS: (paraphrased badly from a quote by Casey Muratori) Layout is about the relationship between TWO THINGS. If you have a layout language that deals with only one thing at a time, then you have failed.

> This doesn't even address the fundemantal design flaw with CSS

I don't think CSS layout issues could be described as a 'fundamental design flaw'.

CSS originally didn't really address layout at all - it was about styling the content of documents. IMO it's a stretch to say layout was 'fundamental' to CSS.

The fundamental parts of CSS are the way multiple styles from multiple places are inherited down a nested tree structure and applied or overridden based on their specificity. For it's time and the constraints it had to work with (ie preexisting HTML handling the structure), I think it was an elegant solution at heart. Especially when looking at it on context of the problems it was solving.

Sure the world moved on and demanded more and more from CSS with little help from popular browsers, but that all came later on as the web exploded.

> Layout is about the relationship between TWO THINGS. If you have a layout language that deals with only one thing at a time, then you have failed.

Why do you think CSS only deals with one thing at a time? CSS is all about how the element behaves in relation to it's relatives (eg parents and siblings etc as defined by the HTML). But it is about matching rules against the existing document structure rather than defining the document structure.

Re: Incomplete List of Mistakes in the Design of CSS

#54

Post by Ygg2 »

gopowerranger wrote: post #51
Ygg2 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you seriously trying to deny IE6 isn't there in the wild? It was a job I had to do. I was paid to do it. It was awful. This happened circa 2013. For contrast I now support IE8 and IE9. Without jQuery. It's bad. Really, really bad. Like, there isn't indexOf on Array and asking for polyfill is forbidden.

You're one-off job is nothing to be holding up as an example of current web development. My company has 23 active clients and I can't tell you the last time, many years ago, we saw IE8 in the visitors logs much less anything less than that.

I wasn't holding it as example of current web development. I was holding it as a sample of web development that happened semi recently. It is also why web dev can be a nightmare - Legacy systems and browser incompatibility.

It's great if you never had to deal with them, but that doesn't mean it won't happen.

Note: It wasn't a one-off job either. There were multiple jobs, government sector.

Re: Incomplete List of Mistakes in the Design of CSS

#55

Post by userbinator »

gopowerranger wrote: post #22
mschuster91 wrote: post #5

> Box-sizing should be border-box by default. Didn't older versions of IE do precisely that, leading to endless frustration? I hate to say it but MS did something right for once.

Not exactly. The W3C spec stated the box model should work one way and everyone but Microsoft/IE did it that way. This is a new part of the spec which didn't exist back then. However, since IE had 95% market share, everyone marked up their site according to Microsoft's model instead of the W3C. It's affectionately called "quirks mode" and really screwed people up, remnants of which I still see today.

MS thought the spec was wrong and the W3C actually intended the more logical model, thus following that assumption when they implemented IE; and why the W3C didn't change the spec, or why other browsers didn't follow, is I think more of a political issue.

Re: Incomplete List of Mistakes in the Design of CSS

#56

Post by gsnedders »

gopowerranger wrote: post #22
mschuster91 wrote: post #5

> Box-sizing should be border-box by default. Didn't older versions of IE do precisely that, leading to endless frustration? I hate to say it but MS did something right for once.

Not exactly. The W3C spec stated the box model should work one way and everyone but Microsoft/IE did it that way. This is a new part of the spec which didn't exist back then. However, since IE had 95% market share, everyone marked up their site according to Microsoft's model instead of the W3C. It's affectionately called "quirks mode" and really screwed people up, remnants of which I still see today.

IE only reached 95% market share after IE6 had shipped with DOCTYPE switching (i.e., introducing the standards/quirks mode distinction), FWIW.

Re: Incomplete List of Mistakes in the Design of CSS

#57

Post by wavefunction »

hayksaakian wrote: post #28
kayamon wrote: post #21

This doesn't even address the fundemantal design flaw with CSS: (paraphrased badly from a quote by Casey Muratori) Layout is about the relationship between TWO THINGS. If you have a layout language that deals with only one thing at a time, then you have failed.

Html is tree structures right? Every element is default positioned relative to the previous element.

default is "statically," if I may be so

Re: Incomplete List of Mistakes in the Design of CSS

#59

Post by spion »

gopowerranger wrote: post #51
Ygg2 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you seriously trying to deny IE6 isn't there in the wild? It was a job I had to do. I was paid to do it. It was awful. This happened circa 2013. For contrast I now support IE8 and IE9. Without jQuery. It's bad. Really, really bad. Like, there isn't indexOf on Array and asking for polyfill is forbidden.

You're one-off job is nothing to be holding up as an example of current web development. My company has 23 active clients and I can't tell you the last time, many years ago, we saw IE8 in the visitors logs much less anything less than that.

You should not be so quick to dismiss other people's experience. You should also not assume that your experience is the world norm.

Us programmers often get this wrong.

Re: Incomplete List of Mistakes in the Design of CSS

#60

Post by A_COMPUTER »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #3
Cshelton wrote: post #2

This doesn't even get to the overall design of css in the first place and the problems it has... http://blog.vjeux.com/2014/javascript/react-css-in-js-nation...

The whole idea of using (at least) three separate languages (HTML, JavaScript, CSS) would seem weird if it were proposed de novo . Consider that LaTeX manages to carry out all of those functions (layout, styling, and computation) using only one language.

XML to the rescue! The alternate future of the web! XML + XSLT (stylesheet)-> XSL:FO (intermediate XML language for formatting) -> FOP (program to convert formatting objects to output) -> rendered format. XML all the way down! (One mistake, zero output.)
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