[szastamasta]

I also spent quite some time building desktop and mobile apps (5, maybe 6 years) and also more than 10 years of building web apps and don’t really share this sentiment.

My feeling is exactly opposite. CSS is messy and hacky way to build layouts (the famous “how to center a div”, etc.) while with UI toolkits it tends to be much more straightforward and standardized.

(Edit: fixed a typo)

[muspimerol]

When is the last time you used CSS? "How to center a div" has not been an issue with CSS for many, many years. Flexbox and now CSS Grid have overwhelming adoption and most layouts can be achieved with a few lines of CSS.

[lelanthran]

> When is the last time you used CSS? "How to center a div" has not been an issue with CSS for many, many years. Flexbox and now CSS Grid have overwhelming adoption and most layouts can be achieved with a few lines of CSS.

The html-apps-as-a-local-app (like electron-based stuff) became popular prior to "how to centre a div" was answered.

IOW, they became popular in spite of having shitty layouts specifications.

[austhrow743]

Flexbox predates electron let alone electron being popular.

[hulitu]

Firefox is not a good example of good (G)UI. It was at the beginning until they started copying Chrome.