3 ms·

After 30-years of CSS, we’re still debating what is the best unit to use.

lmm 1y ago
What would it take to get people to abandon the whole thing? CSS has never delivered on any of its promises, yet somehow people still defend it.
- tyleo 1y ago
  I disagree. CSS can do a lot. I find myself yearning for it when working in non-web UI frameworks.
- duskwuff 1y ago
  What would "abandoning" CSS even mean? Going back to table layouts? (Oh good lord no.) Anyways, CSS is fine. The problem space is complicated.
  - lmm 1y ago
    > Going back to table layouts? Nested tables and inline styling yeah. It works better. It's always worked better, unless you're handwriting your HTML, and virtually no-one does that anymore.
    - baggy_trough 1y ago
      I for one don't miss the one pixel spacer gif.
    - decremental 1y ago
      [dead]
    - maxbond 1y ago
      You should check out Flexbox and Grid. They're fantastic and aren't as brittle as table layouts (eg you can reflow things on mobile rather than having a big horizontal scroll bar). There is some complexity but the dev tools help a lot. https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/a-guide-to-flexbox/ https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/a-guide-to-flexbox/ https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/complete-guide-grid/ https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/complete-guide-grid/ As an aside, hand-rolling HTML templates is still pretty common (such as for SSG themes), which is substantially similar to hand-rolling HTML. You just get `if` and `for` and a couple other primitives.
    - rjh29 1y ago
      So simple. Want a fancy border? Just make 9 images in photoshop and put them into a 3x3 table with your text inside. Those were the days...
- fijiaarone 1y ago
  Tailwind is the solution to CSS
  - geuis 1y ago
    Tailwind is a hot bloat of a mess. Adds tons of crap to html elements. It's mostly popular among frontend folks who haven't taken the time to actually learn css. I still remember the star selector pattern to prevent IE6 from reading malformed css. So me old. But having grown up in my early career during the transition from embedding styles into html to sites like css zen garden, I am extremely critical of modern "frameworks". I still see so much bloat in poor performing pages and often when I dig deeper it's tailwind in addition to other inefficiencies adding repeated cruft that doesn't help with site rendering. A proper 20 year old understanding of css class style inheritance isn't hard, and it negates 80-90% of the complexity of maintaining complex web apps (react components mainly). CSS grids are cute and useful, but for a hell of a lot of web interfaces a simple float and clear:left still works wonders.
  - bryanrasmussen 1y ago
    so you've decided to use Tailwind, now you have two problems: you don't know CSS and you're using Tailwind.
- easyThrowaway 1y ago
  > What would it take to get people to abandon the whole thing? A new styling language, with better syntax, written taking into account real-world scenarios, widely deployed across all browsers (or at least cross-compiling into CSS)? I wouldn't hold my breath.
geuis 1y ago
Agreed. I always used px versus anything else. It made for the easiest conversions from designer to interface. Was predictable and consistent for almost all users. It has never translated well to custom font settings from a user browser, but it turns out those are exceptionally rare vs people who just ctl/cmd +/- on the keyboard or pinch and zoom on the phone.
paulddraper 1y ago
After 70 years of programming languages, we're still debating what is the best language to use.
bryanrasmussen 1y ago
After a few years of the comparison and math functions used in this article being widely available this article was written showing how to use them to improve CSS sizing. Not quite as punchy I guess.

lmm 1y ago

What would it take to get people to abandon the whole thing? CSS has never delivered on any of its promises, yet somehow people still defend it.

tyleo 1y ago
I disagree. CSS can do a lot. I find myself yearning for it when working in non-web UI frameworks.
duskwuff 1y ago
What would "abandoning" CSS even mean? Going back to table layouts? (Oh good lord no.) Anyways, CSS is fine. The problem space is complicated.
- lmm 1y ago
  > Going back to table layouts? Nested tables and inline styling yeah. It works better. It's always worked better, unless you're handwriting your HTML, and virtually no-one does that anymore.
  - baggy_trough 1y ago
    I for one don't miss the one pixel spacer gif.
  - decremental 1y ago
    [dead]
  - maxbond 1y ago
    You should check out Flexbox and Grid. They're fantastic and aren't as brittle as table layouts (eg you can reflow things on mobile rather than having a big horizontal scroll bar). There is some complexity but the dev tools help a lot. https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/a-guide-to-flexbox/ https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/a-guide-to-flexbox/ https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/complete-guide-grid/ https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/complete-guide-grid/ As an aside, hand-rolling HTML templates is still pretty common (such as for SSG themes), which is substantially similar to hand-rolling HTML. You just get `if` and `for` and a couple other primitives.
  - rjh29 1y ago
    So simple. Want a fancy border? Just make 9 images in photoshop and put them into a 3x3 table with your text inside. Those were the days...
fijiaarone 1y ago
Tailwind is the solution to CSS
- geuis 1y ago
  Tailwind is a hot bloat of a mess. Adds tons of crap to html elements. It's mostly popular among frontend folks who haven't taken the time to actually learn css. I still remember the star selector pattern to prevent IE6 from reading malformed css. So me old. But having grown up in my early career during the transition from embedding styles into html to sites like css zen garden, I am extremely critical of modern "frameworks". I still see so much bloat in poor performing pages and often when I dig deeper it's tailwind in addition to other inefficiencies adding repeated cruft that doesn't help with site rendering. A proper 20 year old understanding of css class style inheritance isn't hard, and it negates 80-90% of the complexity of maintaining complex web apps (react components mainly). CSS grids are cute and useful, but for a hell of a lot of web interfaces a simple float and clear:left still works wonders.
- bryanrasmussen 1y ago
  so you've decided to use Tailwind, now you have two problems: you don't know CSS and you're using Tailwind.
easyThrowaway 1y ago
> What would it take to get people to abandon the whole thing? A new styling language, with better syntax, written taking into account real-world scenarios, widely deployed across all browsers (or at least cross-compiling into CSS)? I wouldn't hold my breath.

geuis 1y ago

Agreed. I always used px versus anything else. It made for the easiest conversions from designer to interface. Was predictable and consistent for almost all users. It has never translated well to custom font settings from a user browser, but it turns out those are exceptionally rare vs people who just ctl/cmd +/- on the keyboard or pinch and zoom on the phone.

paulddraper 1y ago

After 70 years of programming languages, we're still debating what is the best language to use.

bryanrasmussen 1y ago

After a few years of the comparison and math functions used in this article being widely available this article was written showing how to use them to improve CSS sizing. Not quite as punchy I guess.