CSS, the only way to win is not to play
CSS: Unavoidable Bad Parts
41–50 of 88 posts
Re: CSS: Unavoidable Bad Parts
#42> If you “View Source” on any “real” website, you’ll notice that everything has layers and layers of wrapper elements, so you might be tricked into thinking that wrappers are how you solve layout problems. I can’t really agree or disagree here, as I never wrote “production” CSS, but, in my experience, it’s much easier to understand if you do the opposite — restrict yourself to using only markup-meaningful semantic ta…
20 years ago everyone was sold css entirely on the premise that, once the standards were adopted by all of the browsers, we would all be writing purely semantic html with completely orthogonal and swappable css. And today literally no one designs web sites that way - html today is mostly specific to presentation. It feels like pretty dramatic technological failure to me.
Re: CSS: Unavoidable Bad Parts
#43> If you “View Source” on any “real” website, you’ll notice that everything has layers and layers of wrapper elements, so you might be tricked into thinking that wrappers are how you solve layout problems. I can’t really agree or disagree here, as I never wrote “production” CSS, but, in my experience, it’s much easier to understand if you do the opposite — restrict yourself to using only markup-meaningful semantic ta…
20 years ago everyone was sold css entirely on the premise that, once the standards were adopted by all of the browsers, we would all be writing purely semantic html with completely orthogonal and swappable css. And today literally no one designs web sites that way - html today is mostly specific to presentation. It feels like pretty dramatic technological failure to me.
If you're good, the same HTML serves mobile and web clients. It's a PITA to write, sure, but if that isn't CSS succeeding then I don't know what is. There's a ton of stuff I wish was different about CSS and HTML (and JS), but going from a small portrait device to a large landscape viewport with the same html? HTML does the HTML stuff and CSS does the style stuff. The fact that you have to tweak the HTML and CSS in a loop until it's right, in order to get to the finished state doesn't indight the fact that it's the same HTML for different clients.
Re: CSS: Unavoidable Bad Parts
#44> If you “View Source” on any “real” website, you’ll notice that everything has layers and layers of wrapper elements, so you might be tricked into thinking that wrappers are how you solve layout problems. I can’t really agree or disagree here, as I never wrote “production” CSS, but, in my experience, it’s much easier to understand if you do the opposite — restrict yourself to using only markup-meaningful semantic ta…
20 years ago everyone was sold css entirely on the premise that, once the standards were adopted by all of the browsers, we would all be writing purely semantic html with completely orthogonal and swappable css. And today literally no one designs web sites that way - html today is mostly specific to presentation. It feels like pretty dramatic technological failure to me.
a lot of semantic features like the document outline algorithm were never actually implemented by browsers so it was hindered from the start
Re: CSS: Unavoidable Bad Parts
#45So many complaints about web technology, where is the replacement? I'd be interested to know if there was the one true layout system that everyone agrees on
apps are the replacement, be careful what you wish for
Re: CSS: Unavoidable Bad Parts
#46> If you “View Source” on any “real” website, you’ll notice that everything has layers and layers of wrapper elements, so you might be tricked into thinking that wrappers are how you solve layout problems. I can’t really agree or disagree here, as I never wrote “production” CSS, but, in my experience, it’s much easier to understand if you do the opposite — restrict yourself to using only markup-meaningful semantic ta…
> so there often aren't semantic HTML tags that would make sense.
Pet peeve of mine: there should really be `` and `` elements, as well as `` (flex item) and `` (grid item) for the child element instead of relying on a div soup with CSS attributes everywhere.
Re: CSS: Unavoidable Bad Parts
#47I mean, this has a lot of out of date information which I guess is not surprising for someone who says I'm not an expert and don't do production CSS, but it is weird to get the suggestions that are pretty reasonable for 5+ years ago.
You know, this speaks volumes. Layout is a complicated business, sure, but CSS just keeps having monumental shifts in how you're supposed to approach it year after year; it's as if it's done without any overarching theory/vision but merely groping in the dark, trying things and fixes, and seeing what sticks and doesn't suck too horribly (this latter part is optional; remember Yandex's BEM?)
at least it changes less than js frameworks
Re: CSS: Unavoidable Bad Parts
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
20 years ago everyone was sold css entirely on the premise that, once the standards were adopted by all of the browsers, we would all be writing purely semantic html with completely orthogonal and swappable css. And today literally no one designs web sites that way - html today is mostly specific to presentation. It feels like pretty dramatic technological failure to me.
If you're good, the same HTML serves mobile and web clients. It's a PITA to write, sure, but if that isn't CSS succeeding then I don't know what is. There's a ton of stuff I wish was different about CSS and HTML (and JS), but going from a small portrait device to a large landscape viewport with the same html? HTML does the HTML stuff and CSS does the style stuff. The fact that you have to tweak the HTML and CSS in a…
GP said:
> completely orthogonal and swappable css.
You're talking about having a single CSS and HTML page for multiple layouts, there aren't the same thing at all.
Re: CSS: Unavoidable Bad Parts
#49> If you “View Source” on any “real” website, you’ll notice that everything has layers and layers of wrapper elements, so you might be tricked into thinking that wrappers are how you solve layout problems. I can’t really agree or disagree here, as I never wrote “production” CSS, but, in my experience, it’s much easier to understand if you do the opposite — restrict yourself to using only markup-meaningful semantic ta…
> You almost always need wrapper elements to group elements you want to align together for presentation purposes only (e.g. "a vertically centered row containing one paragraph next to two vertically stacked images")
Challenge accepted: https://codepen.io/editor/mkantor/pen/019eb65b-5b17-70cc-872...
You aren't entirely wrong, but I think I'd change "almost always" to "often" or even "sometimes". A lot of the specifics come down to how you want stuff to reflow when the content and/or viewport sizes change.
Re: CSS: Unavoidable Bad Parts
#50> Use CSS nesting to avoid writing “far reaching” selectors and style component-per-component
I view nesting as a footgun. I recommend trying to restrain all CSS to one selector, and to instead view additional qualifiers as an escape hatch where needed. Death to specificity.