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Grid Style Sheets – Replace CSS with a Constraint-Solver

gridstylesheets.org

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Re: Grid Style Sheets – Replace CSS with a Constraint-Solver

#21

Post by tomjen3 »

thrownaway122 wrote: post #4
Qantourisc wrote: post #3

I'd love to use this. But in the back of my head I still think javascript should be optional if possible ... not that 99% of the rest of the world cares ...

> javascript should be optional if possible I got a blank page so I closed the tab. Any page that requires javascript and I don't need to use (at the level of do my taxes) or that I don't trust the owners of gets the same treatment. So yeah optional javascript is a thing unless 100% of your audience are absolutely required to use your site. EDIT given that sites today use google analytics instead of their own server…

There are unlikely to be more than about 100 people who would do that, it is just that most of them post here.

Re: Grid Style Sheets – Replace CSS with a Constraint-Solver

#22

Post by liviu »

donatj wrote: post #5

Lol, I have a post from years and years ago where I rail against 960 gs and the like "grid style sheets" for not being semantic, and about a year ago one of the authors of this emailed me asking me to amend it specifying that I wasn't talking about this. I declined, and went on to comment how the use of JavaScript for layout was even worse, lol. I was a little irritated at the hubris of the guy and may have gone a li…

Your response delighted me. It was a good lesson you give him about accessibility and UI.

Re: Grid Style Sheets – Replace CSS with a Constraint-Solver

#23

Post by pavlov »

cageface wrote: post #12

One of the absolute worst things about iOS development is struggling with auto layout. Sure there are some things you can do with it that are hard to do in a box layout method but 95% of the time it's just a massive headache to achieve something you could do with flexbox or even Bootstrap in a much more transparent way. In fact, one of the most appealing things about React Native is that it lets you do iOS layout wit…

Agreed completely. Constraint-based layout solvers are very appealing to programmers because they seem intuitively like the "right" solution -- but that intuition is based on the programmer's mental model of user interfaces. Constraints don't match the way designers think and work, so they're not good as a non-programmer's interface.

As often happens with solutions that are abstractly "right", constraint-based layout engines do a great job of fixing complex theoretical non-problems that nobody was asking to have fixed, while at the same time failing to address real-world issues that impede users' everyday workflows.

Re: Grid Style Sheets – Replace CSS with a Constraint-Solver

#24

Post by kenferry »

pavlov wrote: post #23
cageface wrote: post #12

One of the absolute worst things about iOS development is struggling with auto layout. Sure there are some things you can do with it that are hard to do in a box layout method but 95% of the time it's just a massive headache to achieve something you could do with flexbox or even Bootstrap in a much more transparent way. In fact, one of the most appealing things about React Native is that it lets you do iOS layout wit…

Agreed completely. Constraint-based layout solvers are very appealing to programmers because they seem intuitively like the "right" solution -- but that intuition is based on the programmer's mental model of user interfaces. Constraints don't match the way designers think and work, so they're not good as a non-programmer's interface. As often happens with solutions that are abstractly "right", constraint-based layout…

> appealing to programmers because they seem intuitively like the "right" solution … Constraints don't match the way designers work

Interesting, I'd say almost the opposite.

These constraints capture almost exactly the same thing as the orange guide lines you see in Keynote (or Powerpoint, or whatever). This is inset from the top right by 10, this button is the same width as the one above, the distance between these two buttons is eight.

That's almost exactly what designers' specs look like in my experience – screenshots annotated with lines with numbers on 'em.

Re: Grid Style Sheets – Replace CSS with a Constraint-Solver

#25

Post by cowls »

donatj wrote: post #5

Lol, I have a post from years and years ago where I rail against 960 gs and the like "grid style sheets" for not being semantic, and about a year ago one of the authors of this emailed me asking me to amend it specifying that I wasn't talking about this. I declined, and went on to comment how the use of JavaScript for layout was even worse, lol. I was a little irritated at the hubris of the guy and may have gone a li…

Its funny that you post that, he comes off a lot better than you in that thread.

Re: Grid Style Sheets – Replace CSS with a Constraint-Solver

#26

Post by HelloThereHuman »

liviu wrote: post #22
donatj wrote: post #5

Lol, I have a post from years and years ago where I rail against 960 gs and the like "grid style sheets" for not being semantic, and about a year ago one of the authors of this emailed me asking me to amend it specifying that I wasn't talking about this. I declined, and went on to comment how the use of JavaScript for layout was even worse, lol. I was a little irritated at the hubris of the guy and may have gone a li…

Your response delighted me. It was a good lesson you give him about accessibility and UI.

Could you post it on pastebin?

Re: Grid Style Sheets – Replace CSS with a Constraint-Solver

#27

Post by jongold »

Animats wrote: post #9

Constraints are the right approach to layout. This should have happened years ago. The important concept here is defining layout like this: #elmA[top-left] == "area"[top-left]; #elmB[bottom-right] == "area"[top-right]; The trouble with this is that it's expressed as a programmer's approach; everything is about variables, not geometry. Constraints should be input from a GUI, like Dreamweaver. To see what this looks li…

This is coming.

https://medium.com/@almonk/design-like-it-s-1999-48ce5f5be14 https://medium.com/bridge-collection/modern-design-tools-ada...

Re: Grid Style Sheets – Replace CSS with a Constraint-Solver

#28

Post by paulojreis »

kenferry wrote: post #24
pavlov wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed completely. Constraint-based layout solvers are very appealing to programmers because they seem intuitively like the "right" solution -- but that intuition is based on the programmer's mental model of user interfaces. Constraints don't match the way designers think and work, so they're not good as a non-programmer's interface. As often happens with solutions that are abstractly "right", constraint-based layout…

> appealing to programmers because they seem intuitively like the "right" solution … Constraints don't match the way designers work Interesting, I'd say almost the opposite. These constraints capture almost exactly the same thing as the orange guide lines you see in Keynote (or Powerpoint, or whatever). This is inset from the top right by 10, this button is the same width as the one above, the distance between these…

> That's almost exactly what designers' specs look like in my experience – screenshots annotated with lines with numbers on 'em.

Yes, but that's because those designers were asked to specify the layout in engineer terms. :) That doesn't mean that that's the way they think and conceive the UI.

Re: Grid Style Sheets – Replace CSS with a Constraint-Solver

#30

Post by [deleted] »

cowls wrote: post #25
donatj wrote: post #5

Lol, I have a post from years and years ago where I rail against 960 gs and the like "grid style sheets" for not being semantic, and about a year ago one of the authors of this emailed me asking me to amend it specifying that I wasn't talking about this. I declined, and went on to comment how the use of JavaScript for layout was even worse, lol. I was a little irritated at the hubris of the guy and may have gone a li…

Its funny that you post that, he comes off a lot better than you in that thread.

[deleted]
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