We finally learned to center a div, then browsers added sidebars

Post by hinkley » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 9:09 PM UTC

JoshTriplett wrote: post #154

LiamPowell wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Firefox likes to draw the websites underneat the scrollbar. This was a choice that they actively made. It's not hard by default, they just chose to do something stupid because they think it looks pretty.

I genuinely like the trend towards invisible scrollbars that only become larger if you want to drag them with the mouse, and that don't affect layout. This seems like a win for having more screen real-estate, both for the whole window and for smaller scrollable elements where the scrollbar might otherwise be a noticeable fraction of the element's size.

Post by sodapopcan » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 10:24 PM UTC

antimages wrote: post #105

sodapopcan wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fine but it only centres horizontally. Usually when people talk about "the div centring problem" they mean x and y, dead centre (as this article is).

I disagree that's what people mean by "Centering a div" and the hilariously repetitive corpus of programmerhumor jokes on the matter seem to disagree too. And in either case, I don't think the article fully agrees either, since the thesis of it relates to a strictly horizontal element. If the article doesn't intend to disagree, then it was just a framing device they used in the writing that has some distractions rega…

    body {
      display: grid;
      min-height: 100dvh;
      place-items: center;
    }

Post by fluoridation » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 11:35 PM UTC

tzs wrote: post #164

fluoridation wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait until they realize that on mobile they can use accelerometer data to keep the element in the same position in space across translations of the device.

I've actually kind of wanted something like that. Sometimes there is no size setting that will get the text lines on a page to fit horizontally without making the text too small to read. Making it large enough to read means lots of left and right scrolling which is annoying. A mode where moving the phone sideways scrolls the text at a matching rate so that the experience is similar to reading a page with a magnifying…

Post by tzs » Thu, Aug 06, 2026, 3:40 AM UTC

fluoridation wrote: post #165

tzs wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've actually kind of wanted something like that. Sometimes there is no size setting that will get the text lines on a page to fit horizontally without making the text too small to read. Making it large enough to read means lots of left and right scrolling which is annoying. A mode where moving the phone sideways scrolls the text at a matching rate so that the experience is similar to reading a page with a magnifying…

Most people would rather lines to be broken up and wrapped around than to have to walk around the room to read. Do you often find yourself reading photographs of stone tables or something?

Post by thiht » Thu, Aug 06, 2026, 9:17 AM UTC

saghm wrote: post #144

thiht wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you want them to add Subway Surfers in the sidebars? What would they display if there's nothing to display? This is such a weird criticism, do you think you want the text to use the full width? It would just be hard to read because of long lines, shorter lines are more comfortable It's not like unused space results in some kind of waste, this is not paper, blank space is okay

> It would just be hard to read because of long lines, shorter lines are more comfortable That's a pretty subjective view, and one at odds with literally every other website I can think of