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When people complain about CSS they seem to forget that HTML and CSS started as basically an Word-alternative, or actually more like an RTF-format for the web.

by Puts 6y ago

When people complain about CSS they seem to forget that HTML and CSS started as basically an Word-alternative, or actually more like an RTF-format for the web. Doing anything other than that is simply misuse, and all features we slap on to CSS3 and HTML5 does not change this. That's the reason you can not center a div without "hacks". It's like those creative kids building super Mario-clones in Excel, It's certainly possible but it's still madness. But I guess those kids don't complain about Excel being a lousy game engine...

strenholme 6y ago
I agree with the general gist of what you’re saying: The web was originally designed to share text documents with some light formatting. As it turns out, HTML wasn’t even originally a Word alternative. The original web, as envisioned by Tim Berners-Lee used something called “semantic” markup. For example, a HTML page would have , and it was up to the browser and end user whether was bold, italic, or in another color. It was only in the late 1990s, during the Netscape-IE wars, that CSS was tacked on to HTML; that’s why CSS syntax looks nothing like HTML syntax. CSS changed the web from a world where could look any of a number of different ways in to a world where would be, say, Lora Serif 600 weight italic at 24point. Javascript dynamically altering webpages to make applications was never the plan. It only ended up that way because Java applets on the web were effectively killed by Microsoft when Internet Explorer won the IE-Netscape wars, and no other plugin was widely available to fill the gap Java left. Flash was too proprietary and closed-source to take over the web, but it was huge for a while until Javascript finally caught up in the post-IE web of the 2010s.
- fourthark 6y ago
 > that’s why CSS syntax looks nothing like HTML syntax Also because CSS is rule-based rather than hierarchical.

by Puts 6y ago

strenholme 6y ago

I agree with the general gist of what you’re saying: The web was originally designed to share text documents with some light formatting. As it turns out, HTML wasn’t even originally a Word alternative. The original web, as envisioned by Tim Berners-Lee used something called “semantic” markup. For example, a HTML page would have , and it was up to the browser and end user whether was bold, italic, or in another color. It was only in the late 1990s, during the Netscape-IE wars, that CSS was tacked on to HTML; that’s why CSS syntax looks nothing like HTML syntax. CSS changed the web from a world where could look any of a number of different ways in to a world where would be, say, Lora Serif 600 weight italic at 24point. Javascript dynamically altering webpages to make applications was never the plan. It only ended up that way because Java applets on the web were effectively killed by Microsoft when Internet Explorer won the IE-Netscape wars, and no other plugin was widely available to fill the gap Java left. Flash was too proprietary and closed-source to take over the web, but it was huge for a while until Javascript finally caught up in the post-IE web of the 2010s.

fourthark 6y ago
> that’s why CSS syntax looks nothing like HTML syntax Also because CSS is rule-based rather than hierarchical.