[HelloNurse]

A catalogue of errors one can implement with CSS classes (as easily as using other CSS selectors) and of bad solutions to nonexistent problems.

On top of that, a strange attitude: apart from the embarrassing argument that "old" technology is bad, the author assumes that HTML is written by hand, apparently by a team of monkeys taking pride in the intensity of their fuzz testing, rather than generated correctly from templates.

Hence the emphasis on defensive coding and on treating easily fixed mistakes as a disaster (as if web developers routinely edited pages in production without testing).

[Keithamus]

I don’t recall saying old technology is bad. I was more trying to say it served its purpose at the time but as websites have gotten more complex we’re still relying on this one single primitive.

It’s true that as systems scale often templating systems are introduced to alleviate writing html, but these systems are rarely complete which means developers - meeds unmet - need to “drop down a layer” and in that should be set up for success not failure. Having a design system that use brittle underlying primitives will not set developers up for success.

[mixmastamyk]

Great article. Shouldn't have been flagged; I think a few folks pride was hurt.

However, there's a foot-gun in the first paragraph. In the mid-nineties practically no one was using "black and white" monitors. I remember a few ancient DOS test-only stations at a school and a single amber-monochrome hardware terminal (connected to big-iron at work) in that time period. Everything else doing real work was Win3.1 and color Mac by then. Netscape browser had already dropped and was popular; no one was using it in black and white.

This was in California. May be slightly ahead, and I'm not taking developing countries into account. But color was so compelling it was already not-uncommon by the late 80s.

[Keithamus]

Was a poor attempt at a joke that perhaps didn’t carry :p

[mixmastamyk]

Sounds like you're heavily invested. I found the piece interesting. CSS is far from perfect and could definitely use a rethinking once in a while.