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Comment by mysterydip | Hacker News Reader

I agree with your first bit, but so far have been unable to find layout tools for HTML/CSS that compare to the ease of the VB6-era drag-n-drop component editor. I'd love to know of one, though.

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Those tools didn't work well for things that need to adjust to different screen/window sizes or even for localization causing text elements to change size. For that kind of stuff you need some kind of dynamic layout like springs & struts, flexbox, etc. I think Qt and XCode have drag and drop UI designers for layout systems that work that way, instead of picking an exact position for things you pick their location and size relative to their contents and things around them. I find just using CSS to be easier to think about than those but they're nice for trying things out.

I find it's hard to rat-wrestle your way to a GUI that adapts nicely to different window sizes, resolutions, etc. Xcode probably comes the closest but I haven't tried it in years. I know there are purists who think "well, it's a VISUAL interface so you have to lay it out VISUALLY!" but this is actually trickier than you might think when you have to render the UI in a different context from when you created it.

I've found it easier just to do declarative layout. Tcl/Tk does this real well, and has since the early/mid 90s. I know that Tk uses imperative commands to build out the UI scene graph but it's effectively declarative. Tcl/Tk is pretty much VB done Unix style.

Except they always supported flexible layouts as well, no need for absolute positioning.

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