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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

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well if MS thought they had a better model, they could have proposed it to the W3C and introduced it as -ms-box-model or something. Even if IE's model were superior, it was disastrous to have two contradicting models in different browsers. Maybe whole debacle with 'quirks-mode' could have been avoided.

Re: Incomplete List of Mistakes in the Design of CSS

#82

This is a totally crazy out-there idea, so be kind: Rather than trying to create a layout system that can adapt to any window or screen size, as with CSS/HTML, Java, iOS, etc., what if instead we had settled on a small number of permitted aspect ratios for screens? I'm carrying the analogy from paper sizes: A4, A5, A1, etc. So probably we would have gotten this wrong when we first defined them (see iPhone aspect chan…

So your browser have to be maximized all the time, and the browser chrome dimensions have to be mandated by a spec.

Re: Incomplete List of Mistakes in the Design of CSS

#83
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...

These seem to be problems with Facebooks architecture rather than general CSS problems. For example they claim you have to use "global variables" like in the selector ".button-depressed". But you could just use ".button.depressed", thereby scoping the depressed-class.

Re: Incomplete List of Mistakes in the Design of CSS

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

>that data goes into the html It's more like static content goes into the html, dynamic content goes into JSON.

Re: Incomplete List of Mistakes in the Design of CSS

#85
post #69

When do we get to throw the whole thing out and start again?

It was called XHTML, but then people preferred to keep the Frankenstein alive.

XHTML was just a slightly different syntax for HTML, it did not change anything about CSS.

Re: Incomplete List of Mistakes in the Design of CSS

#87
post #85
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was called XHTML, but then people preferred to keep the Frankenstein alive.

XHTML was just a slightly different syntax for HTML, it did not change anything about CSS.

Alone yes, but the whole XHTML alongside all the XML modules that were being defined was a vision oriented towards to what XAML or other native layout engines offer.

Re: Incomplete List of Mistakes in the Design of CSS

#88
post #82

This is a totally crazy out-there idea, so be kind: Rather than trying to create a layout system that can adapt to any window or screen size, as with CSS/HTML, Java, iOS, etc., what if instead we had settled on a small number of permitted aspect ratios for screens? I'm carrying the analogy from paper sizes: A4, A5, A1, etc. So probably we would have gotten this wrong when we first defined them (see iPhone aspect chan…

So your browser have to be maximized all the time, and the browser chrome dimensions have to be mandated by a spec.

That would be the hypothetical idea, yes.

Re: Incomplete List of Mistakes in the Design of CSS

#89

When do we get to throw the whole thing out and start again?

I always found it interesting that style tags were designed as , implying that new style standards could be introduced down the road. (for a while I thought might get real… oh sweet naivety)

I have a toy which allows . The scripts get transpiled on-the-fly to Javascript.

(Although the process you have to go through to hook a new script type is painful. There are, like, four different cases you need to consider, and scripts have to be processed in the right order but handled synchronously, and...)

Re: Incomplete List of Mistakes in the Design of CSS

#90

another one not on the list is that any padding specified in % is always % of width. though this oddity/hack allows to responsively & proportionally scale images and backgrounds.

Honest question, what else could it be a %age of? Or should % not be an allowed unit of measurement of width?

Height?
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