4 ms·

My opinion is that no one should re-implement CSS layout orimitives and algorithms. Those are rather unique in how (by necessity and quirks if history) awkward,

by troupo 2mo ago

My opinion is that no one should re-implement CSS layout orimitives and algorithms. Those are rather unique in how (by necessity and quirks if history) awkward, stange and bolted on they are. Explore other layout ideas. E.g. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/53911631/gui-layout-algorithms-overview https://stackoverflow.com/questions/53911631/gui-layout-algo...

iainmerrick 2mo ago
Well, hang on, there are several different layout algorithms in CSS, right? They keep the old ones for backwards compatibility, and they have to interoperate which makes things more complicated; but flexbox and grid are relatively new and quite nice.
- Rohansi 2mo ago
  The people saying CSS is unfit for UI have probably never actually built a good UI in anything, and also realistically don't even know how to use CSS. Flexbox on its own is a simple and very capable algorithm that you can use anywhere. You can do a lot with flexbox alone (see Yoga: www.yogalayout.dev) so it's a great place to start. Taffy supports a few more layouts (block, grid) which have their own separate use cases but flexbox is enough for most things.
  - phoghed 2mo ago
    What are all the systems you’ve built good UIs in that are worse than HTML/CSS?
  - troupo 2mo ago
    People pretending CSS is a good fit for complex layouts have never yried to build complex layouts in CSS. Open any actual complex software from Photoshop and Cubase and weep https://x.com/dmitriid/status/1424052288205856773 https://x.com/dmitriid/status/1424052288205856773 There's a reason all the CSS frameworks endlessly recreate the same dozen-or-so trivial components and never dare touch layouts.
    - F7F7F7 2mo ago
      I used to teach a CSS to college freshman class a decade and a half ago. An assignment that I had that they always seemed to enjoy was picking a stadium scoreboard (I initially forced Fenway park but loosened it up in later years) and recreating it responsively exclusively in html markup and hand coded CSS (JS only allowed to pass arrays). Had to go through all 3 major media queries. That assignment was in week 4 out of 15. 95% of the kids came in with no CSS knowledge at that time. If you learned CSS through the aforementioned frameworks that abstract it into a mishmash of barely recognizable selector abbreviations I totally understand why you would think that it was complex and unapproachable. But once you understand positioning and the box model selector by selector sky's the limit. Blame bootstrap for the nature of today's HEADER ROW BLOCK BLOCK BLOCK ROW BLOCK BLOCK ROW state of web design. CSS has very little to do with that. Edit: sorry for the run on sentences.
      - troupo 2mo ago
        > picking a stadium scoreboard The one that has two big numbers and two team names? That big complex layout?
        iainmerrick 2mo ago
        They mentioned Fenway Park, which is a baseball stadium. Baseball scoreboards are quite complex with a lot of detailed stats, similar to cricket scoreboards.
    - exsol 2mo ago
      that's TAL-U-NO-LX in the screenshot, right? Bit self-defeating as an example. That UI is a skin. Fixed bitmap, every knob position and hitbox hardcoded, window can't be resized at all. I don't know offhand whether TAL is on vstgui or juce, but it doesn't much matter, with juce you write resized() by hand and chop up a rectangle with removeFromTop/removeFromLeft until you run out of controls. Either way there's no layout algorithm in there. It's what you end up with when you don't have one... Photoshop is a strange pick too. The extension layer was CEP, which is literally Chromium, and UXP that replaced it ships flexbox. There's a browser version now as well. No negativity, but I feel biased towards CSS ;)
est 2mo ago
I side with your opinion. CSS is bad for UI layout (maybe good enough for text-flows idk) ... opens the SO link yeah there's no answer to it (even if someone does, it would likely be closed by 5 others)

by troupo 2mo ago

iainmerrick 2mo ago

Well, hang on, there are several different layout algorithms in CSS, right? They keep the old ones for backwards compatibility, and they have to interoperate which makes things more complicated; but flexbox and grid are relatively new and quite nice.

Rohansi 2mo ago
The people saying CSS is unfit for UI have probably never actually built a good UI in anything, and also realistically don't even know how to use CSS. Flexbox on its own is a simple and very capable algorithm that you can use anywhere. You can do a lot with flexbox alone (see Yoga: www.yogalayout.dev) so it's a great place to start. Taffy supports a few more layouts (block, grid) which have their own separate use cases but flexbox is enough for most things.
- phoghed 2mo ago
  What are all the systems you’ve built good UIs in that are worse than HTML/CSS?
- troupo 2mo ago
  People pretending CSS is a good fit for complex layouts have never yried to build complex layouts in CSS. Open any actual complex software from Photoshop and Cubase and weep https://x.com/dmitriid/status/1424052288205856773 https://x.com/dmitriid/status/1424052288205856773 There's a reason all the CSS frameworks endlessly recreate the same dozen-or-so trivial components and never dare touch layouts.
  - F7F7F7 2mo ago
    I used to teach a CSS to college freshman class a decade and a half ago. An assignment that I had that they always seemed to enjoy was picking a stadium scoreboard (I initially forced Fenway park but loosened it up in later years) and recreating it responsively exclusively in html markup and hand coded CSS (JS only allowed to pass arrays). Had to go through all 3 major media queries. That assignment was in week 4 out of 15. 95% of the kids came in with no CSS knowledge at that time. If you learned CSS through the aforementioned frameworks that abstract it into a mishmash of barely recognizable selector abbreviations I totally understand why you would think that it was complex and unapproachable. But once you understand positioning and the box model selector by selector sky's the limit. Blame bootstrap for the nature of today's HEADER ROW BLOCK BLOCK BLOCK ROW BLOCK BLOCK ROW state of web design. CSS has very little to do with that. Edit: sorry for the run on sentences.
    - troupo 2mo ago
      > picking a stadium scoreboard The one that has two big numbers and two team names? That big complex layout?
      - iainmerrick 2mo ago
        They mentioned Fenway Park, which is a baseball stadium. Baseball scoreboards are quite complex with a lot of detailed stats, similar to cricket scoreboards.
  - exsol 2mo ago
    that's TAL-U-NO-LX in the screenshot, right? Bit self-defeating as an example. That UI is a skin. Fixed bitmap, every knob position and hitbox hardcoded, window can't be resized at all. I don't know offhand whether TAL is on vstgui or juce, but it doesn't much matter, with juce you write resized() by hand and chop up a rectangle with removeFromTop/removeFromLeft until you run out of controls. Either way there's no layout algorithm in there. It's what you end up with when you don't have one... Photoshop is a strange pick too. The extension layer was CEP, which is literally Chromium, and UXP that replaced it ships flexbox. There's a browser version now as well. No negativity, but I feel biased towards CSS ;)

est 2mo ago

I side with your opinion. CSS is bad for UI layout (maybe good enough for text-flows idk) ... opens the SO link yeah there's no answer to it (even if someone does, it would likely be closed by 5 others)