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Hardest problem in computer science: centering things

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Re: Hardest problem in computer science: centering things

#341

Post by TeMPOraL »

bazoom42 wrote: post #262
TeMPOraL wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that is the point. CSS arrived, and people started saying you "just need to distinguish beteen the semantics of" a table "and the layout effect". Back then, the chant of the day was, "blood for the blood god, tabular data for the god, layout for the CSS god". And then it spiraled into general "separation of content and presentation" nonsense that, like in any good cult, people believed with their whole hearts, pr…

Is accessibility for the visually impaired a cult? How could Google even work if content could not be seperated from its visual presention?

> How could Google even work if content could not be seperated from its visual presention?

Approximately. Like it did and does.

The simplest way is to just strip the markup (or, for purposes of indexing, just ignore any token that resembles a HTML tag). That'll easily get you 90% there. You'll lose important information that's tied to form, but that's a consequence of operating in plaintext land. If doing this to build an index of the web, you'll have problem with scoundrels stuffing irrelevant text made invisible to humans by markup/CSS/JS, but that's exactly the problem Google used to have for a long time, and the essence of what SEO is :).

Re: Hardest problem in computer science: centering things

#342

Post by kgeist »

Just a few weeks ago we released a feature where one of the most prominent buttons had a misaligned icon. The feature was reviewed by the QA engineers, the product owner reviewed it etc. I was the first person to notice it. After I pointed it out, everyone started seeing it, too. However, I had to specifically mention that there is a misaligned icon on a certain button. People couldn't see what's wrong even when carefully looking at the button, if you just said "something's wrong with the button". I had to actually say "the icon is not centered correctly". Only then they started seeing it. I guess most people just don't care.

Re: Hardest problem in computer science: centering things

#343

Post by bazoom42 »

coldtea wrote: post #292
bazoom42 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CSS never recommended float/clear as an alternative to table-based layout. CSS had ‘display:table’ for when you needed a tabular layout without the semantic baggage of the table-tag.

CSS is just a language + words of paper spec. CSS, as in "CSS evangelists", influential web designers, guidelines in web development resources, books, and so on, recommended and advocated for the use of clear/float. You might not have been there, but float layout was a big thing back then, and everybody was guilt-pressured to use that - neither tables, nor "display: table" (which was used by some, but also discourage…

You are probably remembering advice from the dark age of IE6 dominance where display:table was not well supported. I have also seen advice againt using html tables in the early days of mobile browsers since they handled them badly.

The problem is people forget context. The advice “dont use tables ” is remembered as “tables are bad, never use tables or anything which remotely looks like a table”.

Re: Hardest problem in computer science: centering things

#344

Post by dudefeliciano »

devjab wrote: post #126
Maxion wrote: 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’m not entirely sure I agree with you on this. It’s hard for me to say because I really like the imperfections in things I build, for the most part. Like I’ll full spartle a wall (not entirely sure if this is the correct English description) and I’ll intentionally leave the finish less than “perfect” because I think it adds a little soul to it that will make me happy down the years. Then you have things like floorin…

> The thing with buildings, however, is that you have to cheat. Buildings are imperfect and they can even more around a bit as weather conditions change.

design systems are imperfect, and can become even more so with changing specs/frameworks/dependencies/browser updates/...

Re: Hardest problem in computer science: centering things

#345

Post by zaphar »

bazoom42 wrote: post #262
TeMPOraL wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that is the point. CSS arrived, and people started saying you "just need to distinguish beteen the semantics of" a table "and the layout effect". Back then, the chant of the day was, "blood for the blood god, tabular data for the god, layout for the CSS god". And then it spiraled into general "separation of content and presentation" nonsense that, like in any good cult, people believed with their whole hearts, pr…

Is accessibility for the visually impaired a cult? How could Google even work if content could not be seperated from its visual presention?

Google never had a problem working with content that was blended with it's visual presentation. They literally doesn't care. They crawl anything even pdf and other non-html content.

The semantic web was born from a belief that it would enable a peer to peer web that never materialized. Accessibility was better solved by aria annotations a long time ago and the semantic web was never going to properly solve it.

Re: Hardest problem in computer science: centering things

#346

Post by swader999 »

Maxion wrote: post #98
dr_kiszonka wrote: post #78

Don't read this article, if you are not in web dev. Once you start seeing it, you can't stop seeing it, and it will drive you crazy forever. It is the same for noticing misalignment, recognizing color oversaturation, high quality speakers/headphones, etc. (It is a good article!)

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

Most import rule is to never do your own drywall. I still haven't learned it.

Re: Hardest problem in computer science: centering things

#347

Post by atrevbot »

lostlogin wrote: post #181
Maxion wrote: 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

Tiles. There is a correct way to install them. I don’t know how you decide what’s correct, but sometimes it’s centred, sometimes a full one on the left, or the right. Then you have the same scenario but top to bottom.

When we were building our house I built a tool[0] for exactly this problem so I could visualize how tiles would look w/ different arranging. Worked really well for both floor tile and tile on the shower walls

[0] https://tilelayoutwizard.com/

Re: Hardest problem in computer science: centering things

#348

Post by zaphar »

bazoom42 wrote: post #280
coldtea wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should not have advised against that either. It was a much saner, simpler, and more efficient mechanism that the clear/float monstrocities imposed upon people in the period before grid, which reinvented the same thing (table layout) just without the actual tags.

You could use ‘display:table’ in CSS if you wanted a tabular layout without using the table-tags. This has been part of CSS for 25 years. Grid is newer and more powerful.

display:table was never really evangelized for tabular layout. They were pretty much ignored and the literature and documentation missed the point. Tabular layout is really just another word for grid layouts. Grid layouts took forever to arrive. Tables were the only reliable way lay things out in a grid for a very long time and yet were discouraged regardless. There were people who knew about display:table and used it and some of us were nevertheless told we were doing it wrong because people got hung up on the word table.

Like many things in CSS features that should have been present in the original 2.0, when it became clear that the web wanted to be laid out like a magazine, Took multiple decades to actually appear. As a result we are still seeing the fallout of those failures in our ecosystem.

Re: Hardest problem in computer science: centering things

#349

Post by swader999 »

mark38848 wrote: post #123
Maxion wrote: 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.

My house is built on top of bentonite clay (I think that's the term). My doors would stick if there weren't gaps. I have a system where I measure the level across the house and adjust my teleposts every year too.

Re: Hardest problem in computer science: centering things

#350

Post by OJFord »

lostlogin wrote: post #183
Stratoscope wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You’re not going to ever build a perfect floor if you build it all the way to the wall. So what you do is that you leave a gap between the wall and the floor and you cover that gap up with wooden “footlists” (again not sure if that’s the correct English description). This gives you a “perfect” floor which aligns with everything in the room. Here in the US, it's called “baseboard”: https://www.google.com/images?q=ba…

It’s ‘skirting’ here in NZ.

Probably throughout the Commonwealth, skirting or skirting board (it is here in the UK too), and a confused Canada as for most of these words!
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