[bobthepanda]

tables with layout wasn't really an issue of purity, but they were another layer of the cruft you described where we were abusing things not built to actually do that.

grid and flexbox are probably closer to actually being a one-stop easy-to-use paradigm with less nasty edge cases than tables, but all the table code stuff is still there if you really want to do it.

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> I don't think it is hard to argue that the biggest reason that browsers have had the success and development that they have had, is the privilege that we have given port 80 in the world.

I actually think this is orthogonal. The power of frameworks like React is that nobody wants to write the same app five times (windows/mac/linux/ios/android) using sometimes wildly different native coding paradigms, and coordinating feature development across native platforms is like herding cats.

[taeric]

You can really only hang a claim on "abusing things not build to actually do that" on the same peg that "purity" hangs on, though?

I mostly agree with the point that this is orthogonal to frameworks. I'm just putting that in here for why people disagree with many common web frameworks. A lot of the complaints that many of us have, are ultimately rooted in what they are building on top of. CSS, in particular, is remarkably ill suited for interface design.

[bobthepanda]

Yeah, but it's the same thing as the "built on top of awkward layers" problem that you describe as a problem. it either is or isn't a problem, and then today you can still write it if you want.

People were doing things like making rounded buttons using tables, using things self-described as "clever hacks", and they mostly stopped working because as things like new viewport dimensions showed up you needed to paper over that too.

at least from what i've seen, the other strength of CSS is that it gets used for literally everything and so it's possible to build most conceivable layouts. A lot of the other layout frameworks either just use CSS, or you might run into edge cases because of the sheer amount of things in CSS that may not be well supported elsewhere or do not have a clear parallel.

[taeric]

CSS is easy to hate on, if only because of how much easier form builders were with VBA and such. Flash was also amazing, for content creation.

But I don't want to belabor examples. Fitting everything to the DOM is probably a worse part of the problem. Especially with how people insist on trying to rube Goldberg the layout on the regular behavior, which is clearly for a much more linear document. (Incidentally, no complaints on it to represent a document...)

Then you try to make things stateless for the HTTP nature. As well as largely pretending that the URLs are file system paths.

Both of those land you with frameworks on the frontend that are easy to complain about. We then add to the pain by trying to use the same framework for native.