[duxup]

Was CSS even "meant" for layout initially?

To me Flexbox is still pretty natural. Names might be weird but there's not a great deal to know and it was the first CSS layout that actually IMO checked enough boxes not to be maddening.

[crispyambulance]

CSS was originally intended as some kind of general-purpose document layout mechanism. It sucked at that at the beginning and ESPECIALLY sucked at web-application layout. Admittedly, part of the reason was because browser-makers would not play nice together and with standards.

Meanwhile, desktop application developers have ALWAYS enjoyed decent, predictable layout mechanisms. It is so frustrating that it took the web-based world 2 decades to get their shit together.

CSS-grid is built into the CSS standard itself and should have been there from the beginning. It took way too long, but I am glad it's here now.

[irrational]

I blame microsoft. I still can't believe they disbanded the IE team once IE6 had a stranglehold on the browser market.