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 d

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.