Why is it still hard to express layouts in HTML?

Re:Why is it still hard to express layouts in HTML? by doomrobo on Wednesday May 29, 2013 @08:59PM (#5790304)

The problem is not with HTML, it's with representation of complex visual structures using text. I don't believe that it can get much better than this. Obviously some things can be made easier by making shortcuts and making things more predictable when you're writing HTML, but you are still constrained to a textual representation for something that is, by nature, visual. GUI editors would probably be the most natural way of designing web pages but they often produce ugly and inefficient HTML that can be a pain to deal with. IMO there is no better way, except for improving the output of GUI editors.

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Re:Why is it still hard to express layouts in HTML? by ablerman on Wednesday May 29, 2013 @10:06PM (#5790462)

This is something that Flex excels at. Perhaps the only thing that I really miss.

For instance, in flex, to do a 3 column layout, I could do something like:

  <HBox>
     <VBox width="33%">
       [Content]
     </VBox>
     <VBox width="33%">
       [Content]
     </VBox>
     <VBox width="33%">
       [Content]
     </VBox>
  </HBox>

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Re:Why is it still hard to express layouts in HTML? by tptacek on Thursday May 30, 2013 @10:29AM (#5792701)

I guess I'm not really understanding this thread, because doesn't virtually any CSS grid system give you the same capability?

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Re:Why is it still hard to express layouts in HTML? by thebearmaster on Monday June 03, 2013 @10:00AM (#5813295)

Grid systems give you the ability to express things in terms of, well, grids - the components of the grid would not overlap. I didn't see anything in Bootstrap or Foundation that would help me position overlapping elements effectively, e.g. a stack of playing cards with each card offset vertically from the previous one.

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