Oh yeah. The fucking CSS Zen Garden. It started the trend that led to utter degradation of any usability in modern web interfaces. The idea was to make HTML decoupled from presentation, but the feeble CSS of that time could not express any real layouts.

So very quickly web designers started to just hard-code pixel widths into the CSS, removing any dynamic sizing.

For example, on this very page: https://csszengarden.com/ the two-column layout is done by using two overlapping DIVs with a padding on the left one. You could do 3 columns by using the same trick with left padding.

Want to do four columns? Tough. You'd better redesign your whole HTML for that to work. Or just hardcode the sizes.

Of course, this quickly led to interfaces where buttons have text that is cut off. But with lots and lots of useless whitespace padding around them.

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whalesalad 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Umm... this is disingenuous. At the time, most websites were built using tables and were completely non-accessible. One of the reasons we moved to XHTML, semantic markup, CSS instead of Tables... was to enable accessibility.

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cyberax 3 hours ago | parent [-]

No, it's not disingenious. Tables _were_ accessible and easily navigable, including by screen readers. They are also a very logical way of organizing content.

> One of the reasons we moved to XHTML, semantic markup, CSS instead of Tables... was to enable accessibility.

Again, nope. Try a design with 3-4 columns with the old CSS and see how it behaves. The order of elements in the HTML often differs from the visual order, confusing the readers.

It also breaks tab-navigation, even the https://csszengarden.com/ has the "View All Designs" button that is inaccessible.

Then add absolutely-positioned headers and other popular CSS patterns.

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krupan an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I remember tables within tables within tables. Were those really accessible? The humans writing that html couldn't always keep it straight

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agos 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

tables are a very logical way of organizing _tabular_ content. they're a terrible tool for layout, accessibility wise

	▲	cyberax 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		No, they're not. They are _perfect_ for layouts, as they naturally support "move left/move right/up/down" directions. To this day, this is STILL not working well for DIV-based designs.