“Old CSS, New CSS”, 2020-02-01 (; similar):
[Why is web programming so screwed up? A highly-opinionated history of how worse-is-better played out online from 1995 to now, by a programmer who started writing HTML ~1996 and has seen the evolution of it all up close: HTML was never designed to support even 1% of the things it is expected to do, requiring gruesome workarounds like tables for positioning anything or using images for rounded corners, and has been constantly extended with ad hoc and poorly-thought-through capabilities, sabotaged further by the exigencies of history like the ‘browser wars’ between Netscape & Microsoft, and then Microsoft simply killing Internet Explorer (IE) development for several years after achieving a near-total global monopoly.]
With a vast amount of work, HTML/CSS can now support many desirable web pages, but the historical legacy continues to live on, in the use of now-obsolete workarounds, features which no one uses, strange inconsistencies & limitations, etc.
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