[olavk]

The CSS layout model (with float/clear, display:block|inline|table-cell, vertical align and so on) was based closely on how browsers already rendered layout. For example float, clear and align were attributes on image and table tags before the invention of CSS. CSS just allowed you to decouple these layout properties from the HTML elements.

So basically the CSS layout model were designed by Netscape before the CSS spec were developed.

Should the developers of CSS have discarded this model and instead proposed a different model would require the browser vendors to redesign their rendering engines? I think this would never have worked - remember this was at the height of the browser war, where Netscape and Microsoft routinely ignored W3C standard to pursue proprietary alternatives. We should probably be happy that we got something like CSS at all.