3 ms·

Well, there was a previous garbage area, when HTML was, rather than being semantic, laid out using tables and \<color\> and \<font\>. I remember telling people

Well, there was a previous garbage area, when HTML was, rather than being semantic, laid out using tables and \<color\> and \<font\>. I remember telling people to not do that, especially when the first version of CSS came out, and you could make websites look nice with semantic HTML that also worked in Lynx.

Dalewyn 4y ago
Table layouts are still superior to CSS in that they achieve the Holy Grail layout. As far as I'm aware, CSS still fails to achieve the Holy Grail within any reasonable realm of effort. Hell, the entire reason the internet moved from Holy Grail layouts to singular sidebar and vertically integrated layouts was because CSS can't into Holy Grail. With how wide most users' monitors are ever since 16:9 became commonplace, Holy Grail should be the ideal content presentation layout because it uses all that free space on the sides for non-content (eg: navigation) so precious vertical real estate can be dedicated to content.
- ozaark 4y ago
  This doesn't add up. CSS grid, flex box, etc all do the "holy grail" layout with a couple lines. The tables mess that was early www was and remains an absolute mess of markdown to maintain for layout. Semantics and accessibility are practically out the window with table. HCI dictates how humans use interfaces and with that comes many defacto reasons why a plain text page does not solve the problems users want to solve. Do you not think websites test into the optimal performing layouts and content distribution? If it worked better, we'd all be using it (it doesn't).
  - Dalewyn 4y ago
    >Do you not think websites test into the optimal performing layouts and content distribution? No, I think most website devs left to their devices optimize for least effort to create and maintain.
    - kerkeslager 4y ago
      > No, I think most website devs left to their devices optimize for least effort to create and maintain. ...which is definitely not tables. Flexbox is much easier.
kerkeslager 4y ago
Sure, but there were a lot of ways that could have been solved with HTML standards.

Dalewyn 4y ago

Table layouts are still superior to CSS in that they achieve the Holy Grail layout. As far as I'm aware, CSS still fails to achieve the Holy Grail within any reasonable realm of effort. Hell, the entire reason the internet moved from Holy Grail layouts to singular sidebar and vertically integrated layouts was because CSS can't into Holy Grail. With how wide most users' monitors are ever since 16:9 became commonplace, Holy Grail should be the ideal content presentation layout because it uses all that free space on the sides for non-content (eg: navigation) so precious vertical real estate can be dedicated to content.

ozaark 4y ago
This doesn't add up. CSS grid, flex box, etc all do the "holy grail" layout with a couple lines. The tables mess that was early www was and remains an absolute mess of markdown to maintain for layout. Semantics and accessibility are practically out the window with table. HCI dictates how humans use interfaces and with that comes many defacto reasons why a plain text page does not solve the problems users want to solve. Do you not think websites test into the optimal performing layouts and content distribution? If it worked better, we'd all be using it (it doesn't).
- Dalewyn 4y ago
  >Do you not think websites test into the optimal performing layouts and content distribution? No, I think most website devs left to their devices optimize for least effort to create and maintain.
  - kerkeslager 4y ago
    > No, I think most website devs left to their devices optimize for least effort to create and maintain. ...which is definitely not tables. Flexbox is much easier.

kerkeslager 4y ago

Sure, but there were a lot of ways that could have been solved with HTML standards.