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Hardest problem in computer science: centering things

tonsky.me

141–150 of 473 posts

Re: Hardest problem in computer science: centering things

#141

Hot take: modern front-end developers lack expertise in UI and typography to even notice such things.

modern? I'm pretty sure that's always been the case. It's a hard job and not enough people have ever been good at it.

Yeah, modern in comparison to future developers, not past.

Re: Hardest problem in computer science: centering things

#142

But is it really worth fixing these things? What do you achieve by spending time and money to fix these details, other than making users slightly less annoyed by your design? Maybe these details are not fixed because they don’t really matter that much. Have you ever stopped using an app because a button or icon was slightly misaligned?

Totally agree - I think that all the examples included in the article (including high-profile software from wealthy vendors) just show it's not THAT important to have everything pixel perfect aligned and meticulously crafted, it needs to be usable and somewhat good looking and that's enough.

Re: Hardest problem in computer science: centering things

#143
My experience is that frontend devs mostly wants to write js and not css. The term they use for guys like the op is pixel pusher.

Another annoying thing is when they use colors that are a bit different where is should be the same. For things like buttons etc...

Re: Hardest problem in computer science: centering things

#144
post #72

That's because CSS layout was designed by people who thought "float" and "clear" were a good idea, tables were bad, and, when in doubt, make it Turing-complete and dump the problem on someone else. 2D and 3D tools get this right. CAD programs, game engines, and animation programs are all far better at positioning things. They have far better layout engines and constraint systems. This is really a constraint problem.…

That's because CSS is for styling documents, not applications.

Re: Hardest problem in computer science: centering things

#145
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same happens when you: - Install flooring - Install trim in your own home - Build / install cabinets You will now see: - Odd flooring patterns and uneven floors - Know what it looks like when trim isn't coped - Uneven gaps between doors

Gaps in doors are such an American thing.

Look up Altbauwohnung

Re: Hardest problem in computer science: centering things

#146
post #72

That's because CSS layout was designed by people who thought "float" and "clear" were a good idea, tables were bad, and, when in doubt, make it Turing-complete and dump the problem on someone else. 2D and 3D tools get this right. CAD programs, game engines, and animation programs are all far better at positioning things. They have far better layout engines and constraint systems. This is really a constraint problem.…

Man... whole generations just straight up either do not realize, or have forgotten that early CSS revolved around creating documents, not apps, and that all of those design paradigms originated from typesetting. In the same way that one would float a figure to the left or right of lines of a paragraph, `float: left;` and `float: right;` allowed you to do the same. Open a textbook and look at lines of a paragraph flow…

Everyone realises that. They just understand that it is a big problem with CSS. People wanted app-like layouts since before CSS was a thing.

The problem is the people who designed CSS had an ideological axe to grind. They believed that HTML should only be used for document layout.

Re: Hardest problem in computer science: centering things

#147
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same happens when you: - Install flooring - Install trim in your own home - Build / install cabinets You will now see: - Odd flooring patterns and uneven floors - Know what it looks like when trim isn't coped - Uneven gaps between doors

I’ve noticed these things all my life. Even as a young child I would point such things out and others would have trouble seeing it. Once I was diagnosed with autism, this tendency of mine made a lot more sense. I’m curious if other people detect interrupted or irregular patterns so readily. It’s like there’s a part of my brain just looking for anomalies and I can’t turn it off.

Also autistic, I have this very much with displays. I can’t understand how people can stand LCD televisions. They usually have non-uniform brightness which is super distracting.

Re: Hardest problem in computer science: centering things

#148
~20 years ago I was building websites and I would spent hours to make things "perfectly" arranged on them. I hate it when it's not the way it was supposed to be. Pixel perfect or nothing. And then I just stopped with web and moved on with my life. It's time consuming, buggy and while it worked in one browser it didn't work in another. Screw that.

Re: Hardest problem in computer science: centering things

#149
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a weird myth that CSS somehow discourages tables. CSS have supported styling html tables and ‘display:table’ (allowing a table-like layout without html-tables) for 25 years. Float and clear was grandfathered into CSS since they were added to HTML by Netscape. They are fine for their intended purpose: placing images in a text and have the text flow around. Other positioning systems you mention does not solve the…

Before CSS people used to use tables, often nested, for all kinds of layout. Eg if your page had a header, a sidebar and a main text area, you would create a table with cells of the right relative widths, with invisible borders, and put each layout element in one possibly merged cell. This was essentially standard practice for a while. CSS allowed layouts like this to be done without tables. It still supported tables…

And then it took some 20-ish years for CSS to finally realize that aligning to a grid is a good idea and, through a long, painful, incremental process, eventually reinvent tables for layout.

Re: Hardest problem in computer science: centering things

#150
post #148

~20 years ago I was building websites and I would spent hours to make things "perfectly" arranged on them. I hate it when it's not the way it was supposed to be. Pixel perfect or nothing. And then I just stopped with web and moved on with my life. It's time consuming, buggy and while it worked in one browser it didn't work in another. Screw that.

Why would you want to make things pixel perfect?

Why not work with the flexibility of the web instead?

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