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Comment by jypepin | Hacker News Reader

That's nice but really, the problem with css (or what's hard difficult about it) is not designing a single page that has a single column of text with some titles. Any large css files that this is supposed to counter will probable have very similar (and as small) css rules for that same thing. It becomes hard when you need a grid, templates, images, and other more complex designs.

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Lack of server side modularization of HTML strikes again. It makes no sense that we still have no declarative way of modularizing content apart from using IFRAME. Why can I dynamically load parts and merge it in the DOM via JS but not via a declarative HTML feature?

I would love to have https://w3c.github.io/webcomponents/spec/imports/

Imports would be a boon!

> It becomes hard when you need a grid

CSS includes a grid. It works in every current browser.

Sure, but that's only easy if you choose to ignore the 1 in 10 users that it doesn't work for, which is too many for most real world use cases, especially for something as fundamental as the layout of the page.

True. Grid still has a long way to go. Flexbox works as a nice alternative in the meanwhile. However, the semantics of the flex is too confusing and cumbersome.

Those 1 in 10 users don't provide enough revenue to warrant doubling our front end budget to support every polyfill, every workaround for every non-polyfillable thing, and the vast quantities of extra support they require.

If they do in your case, though, I understand.

So I guess following your point, accessibility should not be a thing, on or offline.

You're limiting 'accessibility' to the current 'boil the ocean' approach pushed by the accessibility industry, which has a perverse profit incentive in the problem not being solved.

Accessibility is better addressed in the client than in the server.

Not everyone needs to have the same experience. A common pattern is to make a responsive layout where CSS Grid isn't used on the smallest screens and that's the default. Many of the browsers that don't support CSS Grid are mobile ones anyway but even in a desktop browser they can get a not-ideal but usable layout.

you are right, and that is a great solution if you don't care about offering the actual experience to all users. If the original problem you need to solve is "using css to style a website so all users have the expected experience" then you need more than 5 lines of css.

"The" actual experience is a myth, all users are not going to have the same experience no matter what, that's one of the points behind responsive design. What I was presenting was an alternative to ignoring CSS Grid because someone thinks it doesn't have sufficient browser adoption.

And that's great for sites who can ignore a significant part of their visitors or simply don't have IE visitors.

yes it has a grid. What I meant was that showing 5 lines of css saying "css is simple we don't need more" is kind of irrelevant, because that's not where we face challenges with css.

CSS has a grid system, but even assuming 100% compatibility, you still need to declare your grid and elements inside it, etc. and that is not done in 5 lines of css.

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