3 ms·

Right, people seem to forget that table-based designs ruled the roost in the 90s and early 00s. All of the vertical align, layering, etc hacks came from people

Right, people seem to forget that table-based designs ruled the roost in the 90s and early 00s. All of the vertical align, layering, etc hacks came from people not wanting to use tables anymore and divs (and other block elements) finally becoming more usable. Those hacks were the growing pains of an entire shift in paradigm.

Cthulhu_ 3y ago
Honestly it often feels like HTML and CSS evolutions were two steps forward, one step back. Like, cool that we can now do rounded corners in CSS but why can't I vertically align in a div yet? (this was before flexbox)
arethuza 3y ago
"table-based designs ruled the roost in the 90s and early 00s" Have you checked how HN does layout?
- deaddodo 3y ago
  No longer being preeminent doesn't mean non-existent.
ssharp 3y ago
Tables made much more intuitive sense than something like flexbox now but that came at the expense of being a nightmare to maintain. Trying to hack a table layout together often led to frequent edits and initial attempts to maintain clean layout comments ended. You're left with never ending <tr><td><tr><td><tr><td> that you hopefully at least indented to maintain sanity. But god help you if your stumbled into another person's table layout code... Spending time just entering "here", saving the file, and seeing where the "here" shows up. By the time 5pm rolled around "here" often turned into something like "ass" or "fuck", or if it's really bad "fuck you". IYKYK
- deaddodo 3y ago
  I didn't say the transition was a bad one. I said that there was a decade or so of warts + growing pains as HTML and CSS grew to accommodate freeform block layouts. It wasn't until HTML5 + CSS3 that it was super usable, and until Flexbox that it became somewhat easy.
- donkeybeer 3y ago
  Was it any worse than nested div soups?
  - ssharp 3y ago
    In some ways. There was at least a logical organization around a table, as long as you could wrap your head around all the markup and maintain it. Nested divs with CSS felt like you sometimes be halfway down a road that will never lead to where you want to go.

Cthulhu_ 3y ago

Honestly it often feels like HTML and CSS evolutions were two steps forward, one step back. Like, cool that we can now do rounded corners in CSS but why can't I vertically align in a div yet? (this was before flexbox)

arethuza 3y ago

"table-based designs ruled the roost in the 90s and early 00s" Have you checked how HN does layout?

deaddodo 3y ago
No longer being preeminent doesn't mean non-existent.

ssharp 3y ago

Tables made much more intuitive sense than something like flexbox now but that came at the expense of being a nightmare to maintain. Trying to hack a table layout together often led to frequent edits and initial attempts to maintain clean layout comments ended. You're left with never ending <tr><td><tr><td><tr><td> that you hopefully at least indented to maintain sanity. But god help you if your stumbled into another person's table layout code... Spending time just entering "here", saving the file, and seeing where the "here" shows up. By the time 5pm rolled around "here" often turned into something like "ass" or "fuck", or if it's really bad "fuck you". IYKYK

deaddodo 3y ago
I didn't say the transition was a bad one. I said that there was a decade or so of warts + growing pains as HTML and CSS grew to accommodate freeform block layouts. It wasn't until HTML5 + CSS3 that it was super usable, and until Flexbox that it became somewhat easy.
donkeybeer 3y ago
Was it any worse than nested div soups?
- ssharp 3y ago
  In some ways. There was at least a logical organization around a table, as long as you could wrap your head around all the markup and maintain it. Nested divs with CSS felt like you sometimes be halfway down a road that will never lead to where you want to go.