HTML+CSS=POOP

http://www.zideck.com/blog/article.php?id=2

by jxcole • 17 years ago

17 20 17 years ago

While that may be true, I don't think anyone knew enough about web design when these technologies were created that they could've done any better.

bensummers2• 17 years ago

I suppose they could have looked at existing visual design online and offline, and come to the conclusion that grid layouts were quite popular, and perhaps they should support it nicely?

But what they really didn't anticipate was web applications, which is a whole other story, and something for which HTML + CSS is really badly suited.

I feel the author's pain.

DanielStraight3• 17 years ago

That's assuming anyone even anticipated comparability with print media. I think the original vision of hypertext documents was closer to the of text files than that of magazine pages. Grid layouts are clearly not popular in text files. I think if HTML was modeled after what was seen around it, it would look more like Markdown, with correspondingly fewer features.

Not to mention, modeling software interfaces after real-world objects is often a very bad idea.

jxcole2• 17 years ago

I'm new to blogging so I really appreciate your comment. Let me just say that while I agree with you for a lot of things (like rounded corners and gradients), I still think that they could have handled the layout system better at the time when it was created.

wglb• 17 years ago

Why do you think that? In particular, how would you have done it differently?

EDIT: I am genuinely curious--not trying to give a hard time.

thras• 17 years ago

Oh come on, layout languages had been around for years when CSS first appeared.

The problem with CSS is that it was designed by the sorts of people who like to design languages around vague concepts rather than design languages around getting things done. In the case of CSS, the overriding concept was semantic information. Surprise, surprise, it only turns out to be mildly useful.

The visual web was horribly crippled in order to achieve a mediocre result with a few non-visual edge cases.

pbhjpbhj• 17 years ago

The visual web was horribly crippled in order to achieve a mediocre result with a few non-visual edge cases.

The visual web was deprecated in favour of presenting information in an accessible manner (for people and computers). Not a perfectly accessibble manner for sure. Direct visual fidelity has always been available with PDF and to some extent with flash.

There are good reasons why all webpages are not simply embedded PDF pages although [print] graphic designers will probably beg to differ!

nopassrecover• 17 years ago

Except there have been several revisions of both, and even modern revisions suffer the same problems.

butterfi• 17 years ago

"you know cars? they really should have had airbags when they were invented... oh, and they should have had CD-Disc players as well. Boy those car manufacturers were sure stupid."

Why is this article interesting? He doesn't like HTML & CSS. Fine. I've got a different developer who enjoys his work. Perhaps I'll hire him instead.

jdminhbg• 17 years ago

It's more like if cars were invented without steering wheels, and when people pointed out that wagons had steering wheels, all the car advocates told them that they just weren't leaning to the side hard enough when they tried to turn.

rimantas• 17 years ago

I just hate when people criticize things they know little about. Article is full of incorrect statements: There are at least 3 browsers to pass acid3 test: Chrome 3, Safari 4, Opera 10.

There ir a way to have equal height divs: check out display: table-* properties. Supportend in IE8 too.

There is a way to have rounded corners in CSS, supported in Safari, Firefox, Chrome.

There is a way to have box shadow, and gradients in CSS. Even animation, transformation and transitions.

yannis2• 17 years ago

Bollocks!

Not only the author has not had a good look at both the historical context of HTML and CSS but has also failed to understand the technologies behind the success of the web.

HTML is a mark-up language for documents. Its simplicity has enabled the spread of the web. In addition it provided a means for some semantic marking of documents through tagging. It was not meant to be a graphical language (see SVG for that!) When it came out there were actually no browsers and most computers were still displaying graphics with herculer cards.

Once microcomputer technology caught up a bit, fancier documents and graphics started appearing and HTML still coped. It still copes even with fancy web applications. In the meantime computer languages appeared and disappeared, desktop software morphed from DOS to Windows 7.

CSS was the answer to presentational issues. It got limitations yes and it gives people difficulties, but so Haskell for me but I never tried to blame my own deficiencies to a 'badly designed' language. Yes CSS does not provide for rounded corners, but it does allow you to display the same content for print, handheld devices, auditory devices as well as feel the text in braille!

Most important this separation enables easier indexing of web pages which is next to impossible to index with graphical based systems.

joe_the_user• 17 years ago

Rounded corners are the single biggest headache in HTML+CSS. There is nothing else that's commonly designed and as big a headache.

Rounded corners are a bit cheesy anyway. Look at Hacker news, see any rounded corners?

Eventually, the standard will go to arbitrary inline vector graphics and everyone will be happy and the most horribly designed pages imaginable will be inflicted on us.

PHP-TROLL• 17 years ago

Bollocks to your bollocks. You're reading comprehension must be very low.

"HTML is a mark-up language for documents. Its simplicity has enabled the spread of the web. In addition it provided a means for some semantic marking BLAH BLAH BLAH."

You are repeating what he says in his blog. Maybe you read the wrong blog?

"CSS was the answer to presentational issues."

Yes, but it's not a good answer. It is possible to criticize something not as reflection of a person's own deficiencies, but because it is works poorly.

"Most important this separation enables easier indexing of web pages which is next to impossible to index with graphical based systems."

He never said the separation of content and layout is bad. He said they way that it is implemented is "POOP" Any sane person is for the seperation of content and layout.

yannis2• 17 years ago

If you think that it works poorly you are welcome to improve it:) The testimony of the web provides the answer to the fact that HTML and CSS works.

You can read Håkon Wium Lie's PhD thesis as to the reasoning behind CSS. http://people.opera.com/howcome/2006/phd/ and make your own mind if it is POOP or not.

IMHO it has a very good basis and also provides an architecture for improvements. Pretty much similar to Knuth's TeX.

I personally find no difficulty in using CSS! I think it is the smallest of the head-aches that a web developer faces. really a non-issue.

HTML+CSS=POOP

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