Re:What No One Told You About Z-Index
by strictfp on Wednesday January 16, 2013 @02:14AM
(#5065776)
I've tried to find some sort of backing theory to CSS, but I've only found references to authors, not rationales . You would expect it to be founded on some solid typesetting theory. It would be very interesting to hear how the authors reasoned. I personally find that it seems really flexible, but anything that you want to acheive is hard or inconvenient. So what is the flexibility good for?
[ Parent
| on HN ]
CSS was not based on any specific theory, but rather on the actual rendering model of browsers at the time. This in turn was presumably based on ad-hoc decisions by Netscape when they added features. For example, the float/clear model were created as a way to allow text to float around images when Netscape added support for embedded images at the dawn of time.