[littlestymaar]

> so there often aren't semantic HTML tags that would make sense.

Pet peeve of mine: there should really be `<grid>` and `<flex>` elements, as well as `<fi>` (flex item) and `<gi>` (grid item) for the child element instead of relying on a div soup with CSS attributes everywhere.

[nicoburns]

There's nothing stopping you from defining those yourself for your own websites:

     grid { display: grid }

will work in every modern browser.

[littlestymaar]

For that to work I would need to define a custom component from JavaScript, wouldn't I? (and I thought custom components had to contain an hyphen in there name, is that wrong?)

[FelipeCortez]

try it!

  data:text/html,<grid><p>A</p><p>B</p><p>C</p></grid><style>grid{display: grid}</style>

afaik to create a CustomElement you need to use dashes, yes, but in this example `<grid>` is an HTMLUnknownElement, which renders just fine. some discussion here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/22545622/2393963

[assimpleaspossi]

HTML describes the content, not visual display.

[icedchai]

If you remember earlier versions of HTML, with all the tables and font tag soup, it was not always the case. Sadly, it was easier building layouts with tables instead of CSS for a very, very long time.

[assimpleaspossi]

How the elements were abused does not take away from the fact that HTML elements represent their content, not their layout except for <table> which is probably the only the exception.

[icedchai]

These elements weren't "abused." It was the only alternative before CSS was around! Then CSS took years (decades?) to catch up to the simplicity of table-based layouts.

[littlestymaar]

Not really. This would not be different to <table> and associated elements, which are arguably better than a div soup.

[assimpleaspossi]

Yes, really. Even <table> is used to represent the data, not the layout, though it will be laid out as a table but it's probably the only element that does such a thing.