Both not tricks, and I can't say I miss them, because I didn't work as web dev at the time. I only witnessed the trailing part of the pain, when I started, there were mostly flexbox-related browser inconsistencies.

Anyway:

  cursor: hand !indispensable;

seems vastly superior to

  cursor: pointer !important;

And I once came across the CSS "script expressions" out of web history curiosity.

Dangerous but appealing idea.

Seems like every web dev (well, those working on server-rendered markup and without AI, at least) would feel a desire for this at some point, but it was doomed at the time.

In some ways, reminds me of Houdini regarding the CSS->JS coupling (the other direction is already normal, sure).

But the intent behind it was probably just to allow maximum flexibility... well

  div.title { background-color: expression( (new Date()).getHours()%2 ? "#B8D4FF" : "#F08A00" ); }

does look quite funny :)

I'd love to hear more from people who actually used this.

None of them — they were all ugly hacks, and we wasted stupid amounts of time and brainpower testing sites and then researching and applying the hacks.

I still hate Microsoft for 'winning' the browser war and then letting IE stagnate for so many years. So much time and money wasted because of their behaviour. Arseholes.