5 ms·

Originally, it was not known that HTML pages would be so finely designed. It is not a naieve dichotomy, it is an attainable ideal that has had a very positive e

by tinco 10y ago

Originally, it was not known that HTML pages would be so finely designed. It is not a naieve dichotomy, it is an attainable ideal that has had a very positive effect on the state of the web. We owe huge thanks to this movement that lead both to the demise of proprietary browser extensions (like flash) and to the awesome technologies in browsers today such as these CSS features, new HTML elements and transport protocols.

tannhaeuser 10y ago
These things, while beneficial, don't owe their existence to CSS. Instead, introducing eg. CSS shapes or `content: ` (as two extreme examples) was the way of least resistance/guerilla tactics, as opposed to putting the functionality into SVG proper, or aligning the layout box model better with the DOM model, resp. Now what we're left with is a way overcomplicated mess for generations to clean up. There's a reason Mozilla spent the better part of the decade to come up with a new web renderer. Don't get me wrong. I praise CSS for it has given designers ways to come up with new UI idioms (something I'm personally fascinated with). But I will say this has happened in spite of, rather than because of, CSS's qualities. Designers other than outright CSS nerds are struggling with CSS, and CSS is lacking badly from a basic maintainability perspective IMHO. CSS as a language puts an unnecessarily high cognitive burden on casual web developers by lacking a construct to capture the "intent" of a couple coordinated CSS rules; as a result, unless you're doing CSS every day, you're easily lost in your (or someone else's) CSS. This isn't helped by seemingly arbitrary decisions as to what goes into CSS vs. HTML. For example, responsive images eg. the `picture` element became an HTML element, but arguably should have been subject to CSS media queries instead. Which is kindof my initial point: that the HTML/CSS dichotomy is accidental and pointless from a language theory PoV.
- tinco 10y ago
  I don't get what your point is with mentioning CSS shapes and `content`. What I am talking about is CSS Zen Garden and the movement around it of frontend web developers professionalizing, rejecting table layouts and non-standard browser features. This was enabled by CSS being barely powerful enough, and people creative enough to make it work. Eventually the movement won, non-IE browsers won market share and the way was paved for a more healthy evolutionary path of the web which has yielded these new features. You look at CSS from a perspective that it's hard, as if there exists a solution somewhere that is easier. Before CSS there were simply the less powerful HTML features, the 'easier' but less semantic and non-adaptive tools like Flash or SVG, and the always present and expertise requiring method of simply imperatively coding the styling in WinForms or whatever. CSS was absolutely crucial.
- diamondlovesyou 10y ago
  I agree. Most of the HTML I write is to create structure for CSS to use. For example, a `div` is a container, but we put it on the content side. What would have been better would be a flat map identifier -> binary (or string or whatever, your choice) as the content, and then "CSS" (quotes because it wouldn't be the CSS we know now) would declare the layout/look and would read the content map for insertion into placeholders declared in the "CSS". I've omitted programmable considerations cause this is a HN comment and not intended to be formal proposal. Not surprisingly, the web has kinda already shifted towards this, through the use of JSON APIs in JS.
  - debaserab2 10y ago
    The content map is the dom, no? I can't see what you described ending up any less complex than what we have today.
    - jdmichal 10y ago
      The DOM is more than the proposed content map, because it also creates structure. I think the proposed idea is to basically create a structure without any content, then apply the content into that structure. The current split is CSS is presentation while HTML is content + structure. Unless I'm misunderstanding, this proposal would separate content and structure. I'm not sure where presentation would go; you could certainly make a case for it being grouped with either. There's also plenty of questions around what's content and what's structure and what's presentation. For instance, a section heading is potentially all three. I personally would probably go for grouping presentation with the content, and call structure "layout" to disambiguate it. A section heading is maybe structure, but it's definitely not layout.
      - debaserab2 10y ago
        I'd be curious if there are any existing example implementations that you think demonstrate this - I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around how flattening the structure would make things better. A tree node structure for mapping content seems like it'd be the most efficient in all the ways I can imagine it.
- pcwalton 10y ago
  > There's a reason Mozilla spent the better part of the decade to come up with a new web renderer. That had nothing to do with the fact that HTML and CSS are independent. Tables are way way more complicated than anything in CSS. In fact, tables are unspecified. This [1] is a work in progress draft and incomplete. You'll be forgiven if your eyes glaze over while reading it. [1]: https://dbaron.org/css/intrinsic/ https://dbaron.org/css/intrinsic/
  - tannhaeuser 10y ago
    This is not a tables-vs-CSS thing. Hey, I'm looking forward to servo and applaud Mozilla devs for it; but the reason they found it worthwile to invent an entire new programming language for implementing it certainly is telling about CSS's insane complexity.
    - pcwalton 10y ago
      GPU vendors invented an entirely new programming language for drawing triangles. Creating a new programming language to a solve a task doesn't mean that task is overly complex. CSS has its problems (I'm the first to admit that), but on balance I think it's the best layout language that has been devised for documents.

by tinco 10y ago

tannhaeuser 10y ago

These things, while beneficial, don't owe their existence to CSS. Instead, introducing eg. CSS shapes or `content: ` (as two extreme examples) was the way of least resistance/guerilla tactics, as opposed to putting the functionality into SVG proper, or aligning the layout box model better with the DOM model, resp. Now what we're left with is a way overcomplicated mess for generations to clean up. There's a reason Mozilla spent the better part of the decade to come up with a new web renderer. Don't get me wrong. I praise CSS for it has given designers ways to come up with new UI idioms (something I'm personally fascinated with). But I will say this has happened in spite of, rather than because of, CSS's qualities. Designers other than outright CSS nerds are struggling with CSS, and CSS is lacking badly from a basic maintainability perspective IMHO. CSS as a language puts an unnecessarily high cognitive burden on casual web developers by lacking a construct to capture the "intent" of a couple coordinated CSS rules; as a result, unless you're doing CSS every day, you're easily lost in your (or someone else's) CSS. This isn't helped by seemingly arbitrary decisions as to what goes into CSS vs. HTML. For example, responsive images eg. the `picture` element became an HTML element, but arguably should have been subject to CSS media queries instead. Which is kindof my initial point: that the HTML/CSS dichotomy is accidental and pointless from a language theory PoV.

tinco 10y ago
I don't get what your point is with mentioning CSS shapes and `content`. What I am talking about is CSS Zen Garden and the movement around it of frontend web developers professionalizing, rejecting table layouts and non-standard browser features. This was enabled by CSS being barely powerful enough, and people creative enough to make it work. Eventually the movement won, non-IE browsers won market share and the way was paved for a more healthy evolutionary path of the web which has yielded these new features. You look at CSS from a perspective that it's hard, as if there exists a solution somewhere that is easier. Before CSS there were simply the less powerful HTML features, the 'easier' but less semantic and non-adaptive tools like Flash or SVG, and the always present and expertise requiring method of simply imperatively coding the styling in WinForms or whatever. CSS was absolutely crucial.
diamondlovesyou 10y ago
I agree. Most of the HTML I write is to create structure for CSS to use. For example, a `div` is a container, but we put it on the content side. What would have been better would be a flat map identifier -> binary (or string or whatever, your choice) as the content, and then "CSS" (quotes because it wouldn't be the CSS we know now) would declare the layout/look and would read the content map for insertion into placeholders declared in the "CSS". I've omitted programmable considerations cause this is a HN comment and not intended to be formal proposal. Not surprisingly, the web has kinda already shifted towards this, through the use of JSON APIs in JS.
- debaserab2 10y ago
  The content map is the dom, no? I can't see what you described ending up any less complex than what we have today.
  - jdmichal 10y ago
    The DOM is more than the proposed content map, because it also creates structure. I think the proposed idea is to basically create a structure without any content, then apply the content into that structure. The current split is CSS is presentation while HTML is content + structure. Unless I'm misunderstanding, this proposal would separate content and structure. I'm not sure where presentation would go; you could certainly make a case for it being grouped with either. There's also plenty of questions around what's content and what's structure and what's presentation. For instance, a section heading is potentially all three. I personally would probably go for grouping presentation with the content, and call structure "layout" to disambiguate it. A section heading is maybe structure, but it's definitely not layout.
    - debaserab2 10y ago
      I'd be curious if there are any existing example implementations that you think demonstrate this - I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around how flattening the structure would make things better. A tree node structure for mapping content seems like it'd be the most efficient in all the ways I can imagine it.
pcwalton 10y ago
> There's a reason Mozilla spent the better part of the decade to come up with a new web renderer. That had nothing to do with the fact that HTML and CSS are independent. Tables are way way more complicated than anything in CSS. In fact, tables are unspecified. This [1] is a work in progress draft and incomplete. You'll be forgiven if your eyes glaze over while reading it. [1]: https://dbaron.org/css/intrinsic/ https://dbaron.org/css/intrinsic/
- tannhaeuser 10y ago
  This is not a tables-vs-CSS thing. Hey, I'm looking forward to servo and applaud Mozilla devs for it; but the reason they found it worthwile to invent an entire new programming language for implementing it certainly is telling about CSS's insane complexity.
  - pcwalton 10y ago
    GPU vendors invented an entirely new programming language for drawing triangles. Creating a new programming language to a solve a task doesn't mean that task is overly complex. CSS has its problems (I'm the first to admit that), but on balance I think it's the best layout language that has been devised for documents.