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Better than CSS : what is the root limitation of CSS and how we can build better alternatives?

• It's often frustrating to see CSS fails even on the simplest and most intuitive layout, for example, like http://css-tricks.com/float-center/ Which makes me wonder, what's wrong with current CSS? Are there anything foundamentally clumsy by design in CSS? If we were about to create something as a whole new layout DSL for interactive digital zines, highly dynamic content for all screen sizes and orientations, and native widgets for OS, what would it be like?

• Answer:

  One of the non-optimal features of CSS is that it controls both the arrangement of elements and they way they're styled. It's totally fine for setting things like font color and borders and all that, but let's be honest: For a system that was supposed to replace layout tables, CSS2 is remarkably bad at actually replicating what layout tables let us do. Instead of creating grids and gutters and snapping elements into place, we have this awkward combination of floats and margins, pixel- and percentage-based units we can't combine[1], and absolute/relative/absolute-but-relative positioning that do counterintuitive things even when browser bugs don't break them. If you look at what the major CSS frameworks do, it's never about making it easier to make things look good[2]—it's about increasing productivity and solving layout problems that wouldn't exist if there were a grid system built in. It might help to separate the functions of CSS into two domains: A true styling language that sets fonts, colors, backgrounds, and so on A layout language that specifies where elements go and how the the page flows, preferably with a grid system (which CSS3 has) That seems to be the solution designers want, and it's the one they've already come up with while we wait for CSS3 to be widely deployed. Just adding a grid layout mechanism on its own might work well enough, but realistically it'll be years until it's actually implemented widely. Given that lag, I think the W3 might as well take the opportunity to deprecate most of the awkward layout features we have or shunt them into a separate sub-language where they can't interfere with grid features as the one way to do things. (I'm not saying there's no use for floats and positioning in CSS with a grid system, but they should never be allowed to mess with the layout of grid-positioned blocks.) ---- [1] There's no such thing as width: 50% + 2px. [2] Except maybe normalizing features that aren't quite cross-browser.