Earlier quoted context omitted.
I remember the dumpster-fire days too. The thing that I can't understand is, why did it take SO LONG to get useable, proper, and intuitive CSS-based layout on web-pages? I mean, we've had all kinds of rock-solid mechanisms for layout in desktop applications since the dawn of GUI's in the NINETEEN EIGHTIES. Meanwhile, in CSS, people had resort to HTML tables up until sometime in the early naughts, when AWFUL, counteri…
> The thing that I can't understand is, why did it take SO LONG to get useable, proper, and intuitive CSS-based layout on web-pages? Many reasons: - HTML and CSS are not designed for anything complex. HTML and CSS at their core are only meant to display a static page of text and some images in a single rendering pass on a computer from 1990s. - Many decisions in CSS (especially early CSS) are one-off solutions that m…
Yeah, I believe you, I can see how that would have been the thinking back in the 90's. But there started to be significant web applications in the early 2000's.
It's all water under the bridge now, but what if there had been more "throwing away" (deprecation) of the bad stuff and less mitigation with the whims of browser implementors? I feel like we would be in a better position today.
What if the W3C had taken a more standards-based approach with hard PASS/FAIL requirements on styling/layout/semantics rather than "recommendations" that browser implementors have always taken as optional and subject to interpretation?