Hacker News Reader

Comment by wcfrobert | Hacker News Reader

I am not a frontend dev but centering a div came to mind.

I just want to center the damn content. I don't much care about the intricacies of using auto-margin, flexbox, css grid, align-content, etc.

View on HN

I'm afraid that css is so broken that even AI won't help you to generalize centering content. Otoh, in the same spirit you are now a proficient ios/android developer where it's just "center content - BOOM!".

I know this is a meme but centering a div is really not hard.

15 years ago it was just a google away, im sure AI can handle it fine.

Why do you think this is only a meme? Flow modes, centering methods and content are still at odds with each other and don't generalize. This idiotic model cannot get it right unless you're designing for a very specific case that will shatter as soon as you bump its shoulder.

Edit: I've been in the AI CSS BS loop just a few days ago, not sure how you guys miss it. I start screaming f-'s and "are you an idiot" when it cycles through "doesn't work", "ignored prereqs" and "doesn't make sense at all".

Just do everything with flexbox. https://flexboxfroggy.com is a good example of what's possible

What if I have text nodes in the mix? And I don't know that in advance, e.g. I'm doing <div>{content}</>? What if this div is in a same-class flexbox and now its margins or --vars clash with the defaults of its parent, which it knows nothing about by the principle of isolation? Then you may suggest using wrapper boxes for all children, but how e.g. align-baseline crosses that border is now a mystery that depends on a bunch of other properties at each side.

Your reply is correct, but it's exactly that "just do this specific configuration" sort of correct, which punctures component isolation all the way through and makes these layers leak into each other, creating a non-refactorable mess.

That doesn't seem like a #2 scenario, unless you're okay with your centered divs not being centered some of the time.

looking at most websites, regardless of how much money and human energy has been spent on them:

yes I think we're okay with divs not being centered some of the time.

many millions have been spilled to adjust pixels (while failing to handle loads of more common issues), but most humans just care if they can eventually get what they want to happen if they press the button harder next time.

(I am not an LLM-optimist, but visual layout is absolutely somewhere that people aren't all that picky about edge cases, because the success rate is abysmally low already. it's like good translations: it can definitely help, and definitely be worth the money, but it is definitely not a hard requirement - as evidence I point to the vast majority of translated software.)

Humans can extract information quicker from proper layouts. A good layout brings faster clarity in your head. What developers often get wrong: it's not just about doing something, it's also about how simple and fast to parse and understand it was (from a visual point of view as well, of course information architecture and UX matter a lot as well). Not aligning things is a slippery slope. If you can't center a div, probably all the other things that are more complex in your website / app are going to be off or even broken. Thankfully AIs can center divs by now, but proper grid systems understanding is at best frontier.

It absolutely helps, but this is about whether it's truly needed or not.

I think there's overwhelming evidence that it's not truly necessary.

I could imagine a vision-enabled transformer model being useful to create a customizable “reading mode”, that adjusts page layout based on things like user prefs, monitor/window size, ad recognition, visual detail of images, information density of the text, etc.

Maybe in an alternate universe where every user-agent enabled browser had this type of thing enabled by default, most companies would skip site design all together and just publish raw ad copy, info, and images.

Are you describing coding html via LLM or actually using the llm as a rendering engine for ui

Neither. They're describing the philosophical similarities of:

  * "Has only been that way so far because that's how computers are" and
  * "I just want to center the damn content.
     I don't much care about the intricacies of using
     auto-margin, flexbox, css grid, align-content, etc."

Centering a div is seen as difficult because complexities that boil down to "that's just how computers are", and they find (imo rightful) frustration in that.

> I don't much care about the intricacies of using auto-margin, flexbox, css grid, align-content, etc.

You do / did care, e.g. browser support.

This sounds like a front-end dev that understands the intricacies of all of this when, again, this person is saying "I just want the content centered".

At some point this is just silly.

If you're assuming the user knows nothing then all tasks are hard. Ever try putting an image in a page if you don't know HTML? It's pretty tricky.

At some point, sure; but there is always value in comprehending why someone might find an existing flow overly obtuse and/or frustrating when they "just want to do a simple thing".

To imagine otherwise reminds me of The Infamous Dropbox Comment.

Addendum: to wit, whole companies, like SquareSpace and Wix, exist because web dev is a pain and WYSWIG editors help a lot

> Addendum: to wit, whole companies, like SquareSpace and Wix, exist because web dev is a pain and WYSWIG editors help a lot

But these companies DO care (or at least that's the point) and don't "just want to do a simple thing".

The point of outsourcing is to give it to a professional with expertise like seeing a doctor. Dropbox isn't "just a simple thing" either, so no not the same.

> again, this person is saying "I just want the content centered".

You can't just want. It always backfires. It's called being ignorant. There are always consequences. I just want to cross the road without caring too. Oh the cars might just hit me. Doesn't matter?

> This sounds like a front-end dev that understands the intricacies of all of this

That's the person that's supposed to do this job? Sounds bog standard. What's the problem?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com