Because rectilinear layout is well-supported ... but completely non-intuitive and artless. Options to do otherwise are painful and time-consuming and immediatel

Because rectilinear layout is well-supported ... but completely non-intuitive and artless. Options to do otherwise are painful and time-consuming and immediately run into browser incompatibilities. Just try laying out a series of iconic buttons in a swooping curve. Or try laying out some text inside a circle ... or just making a circle, a triangle, a leaf-shape... or fitting an image between two columns of text ... The tools to do all of this were available 25 years ago in desktop-publishing apps. Creating a beautiful page took design skills, but the layout was not done with CSS but by drawing on the page and making adjustments with handles. Not by endless hours of fussing with CSS version xyz and grids and flexes and compromises by sacrificing original intent. HTML layout is absurdly painful. Most people with deadlines don't have time to spend hours to make it work in one browser, switching to another browser and SCREAMING, and tossing it all out and returning to rectilinear boxes. That's why.