*) Fonts: Antialiasing and custom fonts. It is a layout/design question whether or not you want the font to be antialiased and whether or not you want a different font. For sure i am very well aware of the fact that a font in the web can be copied but its a huge need for the versatility of html as a document language.

*) Calculative sizes: (100%-40px) … i don’t know how often i ran into problems by missing something like that. Same goes for ranges:
(from 40px to 120px) so if there is not enough space use at least 40px else go up to at most 120px.

*) Excluding selectors: It is possible to include more than one selector but its not possible to exclude one. I always needed to rethink structures(eigther html or css) if my client needed this or that to be added.

*) dedicated parents off the tree structure: Right now the offset parent has to be in the same structure as the node. So if you want some subtitle to be same sized like the dynamic element on the left you had to eighter fix some size or use javascript or change structure. So a “size-parent” would be a straight & nice stuff.

*) Rotation: At least 90° steps but for sure *° would be better imho. Its something straight missing for a while now.

*) Nice but not really necessary: color modes: Having the ability to set the color overlay mode just like in photoshop is sometimes avoiding a lot of pain.

*) Antialiased images: Not every page wants or requires antialiased images (proper antialiased images) especially if they are ment to load fast (and use the right size anyway). But some pages (most i work for) require that scaled images are proper antialiased. Since i mentioned before that antialiasing is a style-specific element i really miss to see it. (Actually if you combine it to the 1st point: Antialiasing optional for everything)

*) Nice and colorful (but useless): Reflections. Every newer page uses SVG based or whatever used reflections for almost anything, sure its a trend since its they figured out how it works some time ago. I think it will sooner or later establish its way for some pages and it would be really nice to have it for every element (including svg and input fields).

*) Seperate hover areas: How many times i needed to trick to get the hover area to the place i wished even if there was no way to get there.

Sorry but I disagree with this statement, CSS is very easy to use and most modern browsers impliment it correctly. The issues come when you do not understand the technology fully enough or you try to make a site cross browser compatible. It’s the browser implementation at fault, not CSS.

Ah yes the CSS stylings of Molly E. Holzschlag. I attended one of her talks at ajax experience and asked this exact same question why is the grid system bad? I went with a completely open mind. I really thought she’d have some insight that would help me understand why CSS completely ignores them. And, I got the same “Don’t constrain your design to a grid” answer from her. She didn’t give me any practical explainations about why it was hard to maintain, or difficult to modify. It was the old “Just think of the possibilities” answer. Quite frankly I was tremendously unimpressed just like I’m unimpressed with the pro-CSS zealots arguments on this forum. I guess I should have seen it coming after I sat thru her talk hoping she’d give me that higher level understanding about CSS showing me something I’d missed along my journey, but no I had really covered most of it. She recited the same old techniques I saw on the web for building a table less login form. And, remarkably I’m getting the exact same answer as to “Why Grids are bad” from most of the people defending CSS. And, when they can’t answer my question they freak out and tell me that I’m whining or I suck as a developer. And, that I should learn CSS. I learned CSS. I sought sage advice from Molly after teaching myself for 4 months. I read numerous A List Apart articles. I’ve been to w3cschool and read the tutorials numerous times. And, I gotta say CSS is still not good enough. It’s not easily expressive.

CSS’ answer to the predictable alignment is using fixed widths! Since when has this been a decent solution to line items up. If I had a real grid solution then I could at least let the browser figure out the size of the cell based on the content it contains. What happens when “User” turns into “Internaute” in French on my login form? Oh and remember to indent the margin-left: to be the width of all the cells before it plus a little white space to make it look nice. Calculate that up, run it, and….It looks like crap. Aw I see I forgot to use float? WTF why the hell do I have to use float to line up stupid boxes! Oh and finally add a clear to wrap the lines. Was that all clear? Going through this exercise is like writing DB code in assembly. I’m writing low level code to teach my browser how to create a grid. And, my results are even less flexible than if I had a proper grid. What’s wrong with this picture? We should be able to communicate with CSS’ layout in a higer level way. “Hello CSS create a 4×4 grid of the following div’s.”

Sure the ability to break away from the grid is nice if you want to do some artsy examples like she has in her articles. I think for websites for MTV or band promotion sites these techniques are cool. But, for 98% of the websites out there it’s not. Usually the types of sites she’s showing as examples of “Grid-free” design don’t have a lot of content, and aren’t trying to make it easier to navigate. They’re trying to do something visually interesting in an fine art sense. Which isn’t what most developers have been hired to do. They just want a nice looking site that’s easy to navigate and find all the content. Why can’t CSS make that easy?

you really acuse those of us, who use tables as for app interfaces, being stupid or in our first steps in web dev.

using css religiously for every possible layout wont solve anything more, than one’ self esteem. anyone who tried to use pure CSS grid laypout sooner or later in their steps encountered a problem that required JS to fix, or incredibly ugly css hack. making a webpage for one browser 100% in css is relatively easy, making it for ie+ff starts to be tricky, making it for opera, ff, safari, and both ie’s almost always reaches the state of layers of hacks and hacks. some of these hacks dont work with eachother. and going entirely JS-way (like proposed layout libraries) isnt a solution either – CPUs are powerfull, but even modern ones can be killed by overJSed webapps.

you could be stubborn and go for hacks, or go and use that horrid thing called table. screen readers most probably are going to be fooled more by JS workarounds and on-the-fly generated layout, than lone table or two. so i dont get that accessibility arguments. esp. that most applications that table-users were talking about, are used by 100% healty employees of some big companies.

one well placed table, maybe hurts css-purists, but it solves so many CSS-inducted problems, while breaking so little, that i realy dont get the point of trying to remove it for no-matter-what-cost. what is a bigger abomination – table (one, seldom two, very rarely more) used to get 100% working application layout across the browsers, or a JS+CSS hacks that do the same, but most probably are goign to completly fail in a browser,that autors havent tested it in.

all grid solutions use css hacks, and all of them fail after reaching certain site complexity. positioning, layers, overlays.. it all works neatly, until hack A disables hack B and all hell breaks loose..

…basic CSS grid layouts are a fairly well understood science by now.

I agree, a language that works on “most machines/OSes” is either “basic” or “hackish”, especially as we try to bend it to new extremes with new technology/techniques. As is often true, good things don’t come easy, and easy things aint usually good. But one can always learn, and an easy google search is often a good place to start.

If the other languages I used required so many hacks I would certainly be looking for a better language.

Are you going to tell me you have total code portability, the range and widespread use of CSS/HTML, in another language? You never have to insert code for different processors, dependencies, etc.? Programming is hard, especially when it works everywhere.

The answer is not for us to argue with each other but to encourage a better structural language to replace/extend HTML, and a better formatting language to replace/extend CSS.

I agree, and I think that’s why JS frameworks with built-in parsers, and extended functions (like providing JS 1.5 spec functions for 1.2) and objects are popping up everywhere. And eventually some of this will find it’s way back into everyone’s browser.
@Charlie:

If CSS gave us a grid we could still have separation of content from layout

I design on a grid system, but I use CSS! These are not mutually exclusive. And I use tables for tabular data.
Rather than whining because it’s hard or you don’t know how to do it, find a solution or learn a new skill! Help advance the language!
@Chui:

[from blog link]

Layout (width) does not belong in data markup, and tables are not the future. It’s an effort, at least.

Browsers implementations suck because CSS is too complicated! Not because they or we are lazy as you claim. If CSS gave us a grid we could still have separation of content from layout. Separating layout and content is a very good thing. But, are grid based layouts, especially since we’re trying to build interfaces more often than documents.

I also think that people who say table layouts are wrong are basically too proud to admit that CSS got layout wrong when it went against tables so vehemently. Grid based layouts are easy to use and easy to understand. Flow based layout, or document layout, is not. It’s pure FUD when people say grid based layout is wrong. That’s just not true. Grids work great for 90% of the problems out there. Graphic Designers have been advocating grid based layouts for a very long time. It’s the predominant form in print design. Don’t believe me read this article on JGoodies: http://www.jgoodies.com/articles/forms.pdf Notice all the graphic design books referencing grid based layouts? One as far back as 1964.

Separating layout from content was a good idea. But, the CSS crowd went horribly off track by dismissing such a useful and simple layout system as the grid.

The people who are writing off CSS in favour of tables really have no idea at all. You’re stuck in a VERY, VERY old way of doing things, and I suggest you pick up your act. I don’t have any problems with CSS at all, and certainly don’t find it more laborius than tables. You are just lazy, and not very good.

The problem is NOT CSS. It is browsers implementations of CSS. (Gee, groundbreaking stuff here). And also, apparently, the competence of web developers out there.

“web authors building apps *will* inject layout elements into their documents”? Please speak for yourself. Some of us are good. Some of these comments look like they’re written by complete amateurs who simply don’t understand the paradigm/benefits of separating content and layout.

“it is impossible to do a true grid without using tables”?? What are you talking about? Yes it is near impossible. Which is appropriate, seeing as you SHOULD use tables for tabular data. That’s what tables are for! Funny that, with the name ‘table’ and all. Table is the correct html element to use for tabular data. No-one ever said otherwise. You obviously need to learn how to use html.

CSS is fantastic, and will be around for a long time to come. If you suck at it, GREAT! That’s more jobs & higher pay for those of us that have a clue :) You stick with your geocities style table based layout garbage :)

In fact, many of these anti-CSS comments seem so clueless that I just decided I’m not even going to continue with this post. Waste of time.

And no, CSS is not the table-killer of the web that you’d all like to think of it as. Because when I write a (example) 15 column table, I know how it’s going to appear in every single browser.

CSS – A new browser issue around every corner (ha)
Tables – They work.

Web apps should be formatted like Quark / Pages / Publisher- but we can’t as long as we allow the users to change font size.

I agree that this is the way to go forward. If this change is ever made I suggest browsers implement zooming (ala iPhone) and allow designers to switch between font-resizing and zooming. That should allow people to view your pages the way you want them too.