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Aspects of modern HTML/CSS you may not be familiar with

(lyra.horse)
451 points todsacerdoti | 2 comments | 28 Aug 25 20:49 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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b_e_n_t_o_n ◴[29 Aug 25 04:20 UTC] No.45060146[source]▶
I really do appreciate the nesting they've added but looking at it as a whole, CSS is a really strange and in my humble opinion, a terrible language. Perhaps I'm just holding it wrong, but it's just so complicated and messy, it sometimes feels like you're just arranging arcane runes in different ways until you make it sort of work for you. It's both a system for styling text based on inheritance, and a layout system for block and inline elements, nested recursively but without inheritance, only containment. I think it was a mistake to combine styling and layout, and I don't feel like adding more and more capabilities to something fundamentally broken can fix it.
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tmpfs ◴[29 Aug 25 10:39 UTC] No.45062384[source]▶
I disagree, I think most of these opinions I see about CSS are from people that haven't taken the time to learn it and particularly to understand the cascade.

Many years ago I did a very deep dive into the CSS specs as I was researching for a new implementation and it struck me as well designed for its purpose of separating style from the semantics of markup.

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1. pseudosavant ◴[29 Aug 25 17:55 UTC] No.45067326[source]▶
It has been my experience that those that complained the loudest about CSS, expected to know it without actually studying or learning it. They already know a "real" language, so why should they have to study a "toy" styling language.

When it comes down to it, making a great looking and maintainable page is just as much work and planning as building a good backend codebase. Neither one just happens.

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2. pseudosavant ◴[29 Aug 25 20:05 UTC] No.45068776[source]▶
This problem is compounded by CSS kind of overlaying HTML in a way.

Lots of "real" devs treat HTML with similar "I don't need to really learn this toy markup" kind of attitude. The worst CSS issues I've ever had to deal with were often caused by horrible markup that was impossible to consistently style.

Basic stuff like how to make a good `<form>`. Putting `<label>` elements next to your `<input>` elements, or making sure the `for` and `ID` attributes are set. Hell, even using `<label>` instead of some `<span>` they threw a bunch of random framework classes on.