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Incomplete list of mistakes in the design of CSS

(wiki.csswg.org)
197 points OuterVale | 9 comments | 11 Dec 25 04:20 UTC | HN request time: 1.279s | source | bottom
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anonymars ◴[11 Dec 25 05:18 UTC] No.46227939[source]▶
I will never understand the bizarre scene of the web's smug collective declaration that tables were dead and not to be used juxtaposed against the years it took to regain the ability to reliably center things. Assuming one agrees that we even did regain it.

Related: I also love when I can't paste tabular data into Excel/etc. anymore

For the record, I don't hate the idea of stylesheets, but...sheesh

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1. afavour ◴[11 Dec 25 05:36 UTC] No.46228033[source]▶
Tables aren’t dead, they never were… when displaying tabular data. When it comes to layout I think you might be wearing rose tinted glasses. Remember having to put a 1px image in a table cell to avoid it disappearing? Remember “best viewed at 800x600”? I’m personally not nostalgic for either.
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2. erfgh ◴[11 Dec 25 08:23 UTC] No.46228920[source]▶
There were better solutions to those problems than the CSS debacle.
3. tobr ◴[11 Dec 25 08:53 UTC] No.46229095[source]▶
For what it’s worth, the very page we’re on here still uses tables and spacer gifs, in 2025. (EDIT: I don’t mean to imply that this is good, just an inescapable observation in this context)
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4. eviks ◴[11 Dec 25 09:04 UTC] No.46229167[source]▶
> Remember having to put a 1px image in a table cell to avoid it disappearing

Isn't this a trivial problem to solve that doesn't require introducing any new layout mechanisms?

5. Popeyes ◴[11 Dec 25 09:20 UTC] No.46229283[source]▶
Probably why there are endless reworkings of the site.
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6. dahcryn ◴[11 Dec 25 09:31 UTC] No.46229356[source]▶
at least they were specific

Today it's usually implicitly designed for iphone, designed for 1080p, or ipad, and you have to guess, strong correlation with whatever device the designer uses in his personal life.

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7. afavour ◴[11 Dec 25 14:28 UTC] No.46231797[source]▶
...no? Today's sites use responsive design and adapt to pretty much any screen size.
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8. anonymars ◴[11 Dec 25 16:09 UTC] No.46233159{3}[source]▶
I imagine it's also why its size is measured in kilobytes and loading time in milliseconds
9. dspillett ◴[11 Dec 25 16:52 UTC] No.46233793{3}[source]▶
> Today's sites use responsive design and adapt to pretty much any screen size.

Today sites certainly can and some (many) so. But some (also many) definitely don't…

A lot are locked to a maximum width, which is OK enough as l……o……n……g lines of text are unpleasant to read, but only because browsers hack the meaning of dimension settings to make text zoom work consistently.

A lot also have an effective minimum width (even if they use responsive styling to move/ minimise/hide side decoration before a certain point) that is not always convenient. Try browsing with a thin window so you can have something in the other side of your screen. Some assume no one on desktop will ever have a browser window less wide than 1280 pixels (or equivalent on a zoomed higher res screen) - not the case on my 1080p portrait screen and I sometimes want things thinner than 1280 on my 2560x1440 screen. You could say I'm just odd and they can't cater for everyone, but 1080 or a bit less wide is hardly miles away from many devices physical layout so if a design can't display nice in that can it really call itself "responsive" (I suspect any such design would fail on many mobile devices too - 1080px effective width is rather common there, as are smaller widths).