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Should CSS be a constraint system instead?

(pavpanchekha.com)
37 points fanf2 | 1 comments | 07 Dec 25 18:42 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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troupo ◴[07 Dec 25 19:17 UTC] No.46184235[source]▶
I'm not convinced about the "edge case" at all. CSS made it an edge case for no reason at all, and made a silly default out of it.

If the box isn't big enough to contain center-aligned text, of course it should spill on both sides, because it's both expected and consistent.

And now the author pretends "we left-align text and spill on the right" as the only possible default behaviour that somehow makes constraints impossible/extremely difficult.

If you don't make assumptions and weird defaults in your system, you don't have to fight them and make weird workarounds.

replies(3): >>46184364 #>>46184634 #>>46184686 #
1. rendaw ◴[07 Dec 25 19:33 UTC] No.46184364[source]▶
> designers are, by necessity, going to rely on implicit knowledge encoded somewhere on what to do in edge cases

This seems to be implying that designers rely on quirks like the left alignment thing and not behave consistently... that seems like a crazy assertion to me.

And that appears to be the crux of the argument. A more general, consistent system wouldn't provide enough context for the browser to provide specific quirks, so instead a system with a different parameter for every single individual use case where quirks can be introduced to parameters individually is better.