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Don't forget that tables could be used for rounded corners. Or maybe I'm an early 00s web developer with that? The trick is that we created 3×3 tables, and asid

Don't forget that tables could be used for rounded corners. Or maybe I'm an early 00s web developer with that? The trick is that we created 3×3 tables, and aside of the middle cell, it would contain <img>s, so that the creation was a website element with rounded edges, the pinnacle of human expressiveness. Since HTML emails were also the rage, and email clients updated much slower than browsers, this technique was used well into the 2010s, if you wanted your thing to be displayed correctly.

tomnipotent 3y ago
Will never forget having to create collections of tl.gif, tr.gif, bl.gif etc. images for those 3x3 tables, not to mention the 1x1.gif the article mentioned that was needed for the left/right cell backgrounds to show since browsers at the time didn't render background images of empty cells. Good times.
Sharlin 3y ago
> and aside of the middle cell No no, the middle cell contained the tiled background image, of course!
eps 3y ago
> Don't forget that tables could be used for rounded corners. And drop shadows!
padjo 3y ago
And right at the time we got border radius the design trend changed and nobody wanted round corners anymore
- RedShift1 3y ago
  I still want round corners! Square corners feel claustrophobic.
  - hbn 3y ago
    They're back now. Hard corners were kind of a big thing in the early 2010s, think Android Holo, Windows 8, etc. I think Apple popularized the return of rounded corners in software with the iPhone X launch, when rounding the corners of smartphone screens became popular. macOS rounded the window corners more, I think with Big Sur. And Microsoft followed suit in Windows 11.
pocketsand 3y ago
I saw a post shared on some platform recently that some screens in Amazon still use this technique. I remember slicing and dicing up the rounded corners in photoshop.
philote 3y ago
I think several things in this article were more from the early 00's than the 90's. Before using tables for rounded corners, I remember playing with a multi-chat app called Trillian (which handled yahoo chat as well as ICQ and others). It could be skinned to your liking in much the same way you were dealing with rounded corners. The top and side cells were repeating images so resizing the window would work well.
AtlasBarfed 3y ago
https://www.folklore.org/Round_Rects_Are_Everywhere.html https://www.folklore.org/Round_Rects_Are_Everywhere.html The great an mighty Oz's crowning achievement. Ok, maybe the iPhone was bigger.

tomnipotent 3y ago

Will never forget having to create collections of tl.gif, tr.gif, bl.gif etc. images for those 3x3 tables, not to mention the 1x1.gif the article mentioned that was needed for the left/right cell backgrounds to show since browsers at the time didn't render background images of empty cells. Good times.

Sharlin 3y ago

> and aside of the middle cell No no, the middle cell contained the tiled background image, of course!

eps 3y ago

> Don't forget that tables could be used for rounded corners. And drop shadows!

padjo 3y ago

And right at the time we got border radius the design trend changed and nobody wanted round corners anymore

RedShift1 3y ago
I still want round corners! Square corners feel claustrophobic.
- hbn 3y ago
  They're back now. Hard corners were kind of a big thing in the early 2010s, think Android Holo, Windows 8, etc. I think Apple popularized the return of rounded corners in software with the iPhone X launch, when rounding the corners of smartphone screens became popular. macOS rounded the window corners more, I think with Big Sur. And Microsoft followed suit in Windows 11.

pocketsand 3y ago

I saw a post shared on some platform recently that some screens in Amazon still use this technique. I remember slicing and dicing up the rounded corners in photoshop.

philote 3y ago

I think several things in this article were more from the early 00's than the 90's. Before using tables for rounded corners, I remember playing with a multi-chat app called Trillian (which handled yahoo chat as well as ICQ and others). It could be skinned to your liking in much the same way you were dealing with rounded corners. The top and side cells were repeating images so resizing the window would work well.

AtlasBarfed 3y ago

https://www.folklore.org/Round_Rects_Are_Everywhere.html https://www.folklore.org/Round_Rects_Are_Everywhere.html The great an mighty Oz's crowning achievement. Ok, maybe the iPhone was bigger.