[Guest0918231]

Flash could be used for responsive layouts. They were actually far easier to design in Flash than in HTML/CSS. No floating, flexing, grids, nesting HTML elements. You just set the objects x and y axis in Flash to the bottom center or wherever you wanted the object to remain, and you were done.

[beernutz]

One hundred times, THIS!

The layout engine in flash was REALLY well thought out, and allowed for simple constraints that would allow for things to grow or shrink based on screen size. You could anchor buttons and they would move properly, all without having to worry about things breaking across browsers.

If someone would re-implement just this feature along from flash i would be REALLY excited to use it!

So far i dont think there is really much in the way of "constraint based" layout engines that are easy to use for the web is there?

[repolfx]

Almost all GUI toolkits work that way, except HTML, because HTML is not designed for GUIs.

For instance look at AnchorPane in JavaFX. You can lock things to the edges or offsets from the edges. You can nest layout managers if you want something different like a table or HTML style wrapping text flow.

In the end HTML is just being abused. It was never designed to be a Flash replacement. If the web was a more pluggable platform Flash would still be alive and kicking for sure, the creation tool itself was lightyears ahead of anything HTML ever had, but the browser makers have killed it pretty ruthlessly. Looks like groupthink to me, tbh.

[thyselius]

This is how I code html nowadays, positioning divs using js, works like a charm.

[tabtab]

I bet you didn't test it on enough browser brands and versions.