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Comment by emodendroket | Hacker News Reader

What is there that's so much better?

Almost any native UI framework (iOS, Android, WPF on windows, etc) has better layout options. Some of them like iOS have options that are not as beginner friendly (AutoLayout), but they are still better overall if you are trying to develop an application instead of formatting a document.

Many other UI frameworks have had Flexbox type layouts, a technology W3C has only just recently realized is a good idea for 8+ years (probably much longer).

There really isn't anything "better". HTML isn't great, but it's all we got right now.

le sigh.

I am quite happy to have moved back to the native world.

Pretty much anything? HTML/CSS/JS was never meant to develop application UIs. It's for documents.

This all evolved over time into the clusterf-ck we have today, setting us back probably 20+ years in terms of developer productivity.

Flexbox breaks with all the past clusterfuck layout system. It's the reason React Native only implements Flexbox. http://flexboxin5.com/

But there are serious known bugs in IE10 and IE11 flexbox implementations. They will never be fixed, so when IE11 market share drops below 5% I will use flexbox. We're talking about perhaps in the year 2020. HTML/CSS is still not suited for app development and due to browser inconsistencies that will remain true for decades to come, perhaps forever. Apps in browsers is doable, but a more cumbersome than one might think.

Because you could do something easier to understand in terms of 3D for a very simple use case and find a generic use for it.

Your browser is slow when applying transform to DOM elements because it has to translate everything 3D in terms of JavaScript and DOM. If you want to manipulate images and elements effectively in 3D then you have to learn matrix computations, quaternions and stuff which is horrible for the common web developer. I'm saying that if you offer a new approach that could mix HTML/CSS and encapsulate those complex 3D concepts it would be interesting.

I'm assuming this is not in the right place because I don't understand how it answers my question.

Postscript. Been there for ages and works like a charm.

Does anybody write that by hand? I kind of had the impression that it was notorious for being write-only.

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