Help us invent CSS Grid Level 3, a.k.a. "Masonry" layout

Post by grub5000 » Tue, Apr 23, 2024, 1:55 PM UTC

rolha-capoeira wrote: post #152

paulhilbert wrote: post #150

"Others are questioning whether or not this kind of layout is needed on the web at all — they aren’t sure that well-known websites will use it." Would it instead be possible to exclude anyone with that attitude from a discussion about an open standard? I know this sounds toxic, but I would argue that approaching public design this way is ultimately more toxic wrt the outcome and those affected by it. Or maybe I misun…

And honestly, that's a ridiculous claim. Two very popular websites I can think of right away are Pinterest and VSCO. (Perhaps VSCO on the web isn't as popular as the mobile app, but the company continues to use masonry as the design evolves.)

Post by mvonballmo » Tue, Apr 23, 2024, 1:58 PM UTC

crote wrote: post #123

isodev wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because why introduce a custom abstraction to implement something with an imperative scripting language when you can achieve the same result with a declarative language built specifically to address this use case? You'd rather maintain all the maths and JS dependencies for this than have browsers just render what you want?

The question is, where do you draw the line? It's obviously not viable to implement literally every single design imaginable straight in CSS. If I want to do something silly like placing my content on the faces of a hypercube it wouldn't be realistic for me to expect that to be part of CSS. Having me write some JS is completely acceptable - that's what it is for, after all! It's not a matter of "would this be better…

Post by peebeebee » Tue, Apr 23, 2024, 1:59 PM UTC

paulhilbert wrote: post #150

"Others are questioning whether or not this kind of layout is needed on the web at all — they aren’t sure that well-known websites will use it." Would it instead be possible to exclude anyone with that attitude from a discussion about an open standard? I know this sounds toxic, but I would argue that approaching public design this way is ultimately more toxic wrt the outcome and those affected by it. Or maybe I misun…

Post by whywhywhywhy » Tue, Apr 23, 2024, 2:00 PM UTC

nkozyra wrote: post #49

pquki4 wrote: post #35

I thought this kind of waterfall layout was cool and trendy a few years ago, but these days very few websites are doing it?

For awhile it was just described as "Pinterest style." It has some use cases but for the most part it's literally a wall of unstructed information. Difficult to parse and build any mental hierarchy. It's also ... incredibly easy to do with existing css.

Post by whywhywhywhy » Tue, Apr 23, 2024, 2:03 PM UTC

pavlov wrote: post #60

afavour wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s almost - almost! - as if the designers of Unix and of CSS work in completely different scenarios and with completely different constraints! Almost!

And with this convenient domain excuse, CSS has managed to become a system that’s not a fit for any domain. It’s incomprehensible to visual designers, incomprehensible to programmers, and incomprehensible to document authors. On the upside, it provides a massive moat of sunk cost and implicit implementation dependency around Chromium, so at least there’s that.