Comment by moritzwarhier
15 hours ago
> Hard not to laugh out loud at "We know what good syntax for templating looks like." We don't. Not even close. Because I'd hazard a good template is almost certainly more of a visual thing than it is a symbolic one.
How do you come to this conclusion? It seems to me that what you mean is a general gripe with HTML+CSS, not with how it's generated.
And why do you bring up absolute positioning?
I hear this take on HN again and again and sure, absolute positioning has its place, and is needed for many things.
But when it's used for page/app layout, most of the time I came across this it was an absolute nightmare, falling apart at the slightest content (even text!) or screen size changes.
Even print newspaper layout can't work like this, because typography is involved, although it's probably a lot closer to what I imagine you are describing.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding you.
But when I was doing more CSS-intensive work (I still do a fair bit), developing something on a basis when someone created a layout based on absolute positioning that looked like it was "almost ready", it was a terrible time sink to try to fix it and recreating it using flex, flow et al for layout (I'm not that fond of grid outside of some scenarios, and at the time I didn't use it due to browser support) was always faster because the problems with absolute positioning as the main layout tool were basically unfixable.
Maybe there are techniques using calc() and viewport units where it makes sense, but absolute positioning is not suitable for any layout outside of completely static content and viewport dimensions, in my experience.
I've been in the opposite, where people will go through lengths to try and make it so that the defaultish dom layout makes things "fall into place" so that they had a very specific layout of elements. When a fairly simple set of elements with somewhat minimal styling would get what you wanted surprisingly easy. Provided you did a lot of up front calculation on your own.
Basically, my assertion used to be to draw out what you have in mind on grid paper. Then start creating the elements. I don't see how that flow could land you with the 100ish divs that you wind up with on something like a single blue sky post.
Is it a panacea? No. Of course not. Can a constraint language help? I think so.
I'll add that the flex layouts seem like an improvement over what used to be there. Even if I find it rather amusing that we seem to have settled back on tables for layout. :D (I suppose it is more like some of the layout managers from Java days, truthfully.)
But, fundamentally, the problem appears to be that the drop to symbolic text is just not something that everyone does the same way. As such, it is very easy to get into a lot of trouble with the number of cooks in the kitchen, as it were.
But flex layout is fundamentally different from tables, I guess you meant grid with that reference?
It's not that every website uses CSS grid for layout.
Coincidentally, I took a look at the DOM+CSS of a bluesky post just a few days ago (very weird coincidence, since that was the first time I opned bluesky for months), and it did use old-school tricks like centering using CSS transforms, presumably because renders a tiny bit faster than flex centering, or avoids layout calculations when elements are added in a virtualized list.
Virtualized lists are also a good example for falling back to specifying exact pixel positions and dimensions for performance reasons, but these are usually determined with help of JS. I think the transform I saw was a translateX(-50%) one, so centering.
I totally get the canvas-like approach, but in a way the constraint-based flex layouts fall into the same line of thinking for me.
The issue with absolute positioning is the need to manually specify positions and dimensions for elements, which makes it useless unless you are working within a fixed box or only relating to the corners of one rectangle.
It is explicitly meant to remove elements from the normal layout flow so they overlap each other by default.
I did mean grid, there.
And don't get me wrong, I don't necessarily want everything absolute positioned. I just find it amusing when people try to get a badge or some such on something and then herculean efforts they will go through to get that badge exactly where they want it.
So, with bluesky, the amount of markup that goes into the footer menu of each post would be what I'm looking at. Tools were clearly used to get styles such as "css-g5y9jx" and this isn't the worst examples I've seen. But I am curious on why so many nested divs seem to be needed all of the time.
I am not clear what you mean by canvas-like approach? I think folks should still use elements. Just fewer of them, all told.
Direct to my claim, though; my argument is just that templates/designs are visual things. I don't think people are thinking in terms of nested div elements. They largely don't even think of sections of their template as parent/child relationships. They have a visual thing and want it filled in with whatever data.