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Comment by antisol

6 hours ago

  > - Make sure it looks the exact same across all browsers
  > How doable is it with vanilla css? 

It's not doable with your fancy frontend framework and your 20 imports and your ten thousand lines of typescript.

"Make sure it looks the exact same across all browsers" is, and always has been, fundamentally at odds with how the web is intended to work.

How well does this shadcn crap render in arachne? ladybird? netsurf? links? dillo? netscape 3? The latest version of chrome with user styles applied?

When you say "exactly the same", I assume you mean that the design only uses black and white, because some people might have black and white monitors, right? But you're also going to use amber-on-black because some people might have amber screen monitors, right? How do you plan on ensuring it looks exactly the same on a braille terminal?

Maybe you think I'm being silly. Because nobody uses monochrome monitors in 2026, right? So it's safe to ignore that and put an asterisk next to "exactly the same" (And also just forget that e-ink is a thing that exists).

(Just like how it was safe in 2006 to assume people would always have 800x600 or bigger displays, and nobody would ever come along using a screen with, say, 480×320 resolution)

What measures have you taken to ensure that your colours appear exactly the same across a bunch of different types/brands of monitors that render colours differently? Or, perhaps we should just add another asterisk next to "exactly the same"?

I could go on.

How many asterisks is acceptable before "exactly the same" isn't a thing anymore?

If "exactly the same on all browsers" is one of your goals, you are wrong. If your designer tells you that's what they want, they are wrong. If you ever tell a client that's what you're providing, you are wrong.

Particularly given that on a screen reader -- which yes is an example of a browser -- it doesn't "look like" anything at all

Displaying the same thing on every monitor to the degree that monitor allows is well-defined. The browser may not be able to show some colors and the browser may decide to display things differently on purpose, but it's perfectly reasonable to want to unambiguously express what you _want_ the browser to display.

  • > Displaying the same thing on every monitor to the degree that monitor allows is well-defined.

    In this case the website will not appear the same on every browser. Most browsers have a zoom function that the user controls which is an accessability feature. This changes how the website renders on the page.