That would mean that its behaviour would be next to impossible to design around if you were trying to account for all of your users screen sizes at the same time.
See, there's where we differ. I'd like to easily design a webpage that renders fine on 90% of my user's screens. I'd bet 90% of my users will be using personal computers, and use a resolution between 800x600 and 1920x1200. Want to look at my page on your non-iPhone? I'd love to introduce you to the m.mypage.com section of my site.
Something like "Center a child relative to a parent" isn't hard to do (we do it at work for our video game GUI), and it really seems like a few architecture astronauts got ahold of the CSS standards to cause these API usability problems.
Also, arguments like "You can't do that simple thing because.." are starting to sound like the arguments C++ pundits use to justify its monstrous complexity compared to C.
1. To the parent, the width of which is known by the layout code of the browser at any moment at 'runtime'.
1a. Fair enough, then it won't show up. But it will not-be-there centered, goddammit!! >:)
2. Which is a very fair question, and how languages get better.
3. That is one way to look at it, the one the language seems to force into you, and apparently it's the least intuitive.
4. If you can get an exactly equivalent effect with other expression, how come you can't have "center horizontally" just become an alias/shortcut/abstraction for that, if newbies expect it?
Then again, this is only an issue for hand-coded CSS. If you use your HTML/CSS as object code, this is easy enough to abstract in your generating code.
See, there's where we differ. I'd like to easily design a webpage that renders fine on 90% of my user's screens. I'd bet 90% of my users will be using personal computers, and use a resolution between 800x600 and 1920x1200. Want to look at my page on your non-iPhone? I'd love to introduce you to the m.mypage.com section of my site.
Something like "Center a child relative to a parent" isn't hard to do (we do it at work for our video game GUI), and it really seems like a few architecture astronauts got ahold of the CSS standards to cause these API usability problems.
Also, arguments like "You can't do that simple thing because.." are starting to sound like the arguments C++ pundits use to justify its monstrous complexity compared to C.