As an amateur web designer in the 90s and early 2000s, this speaks to me. I stopped web development when CSS became popular and I couldn’t wrap my head around it.

Is there a petition I can sign to scrap all this nonsense modern web progress and go back to that beautiful, dial-up friendly HTML?

The web is beyond bloated.

The heavy reliance on JavaScript has suck the joy out of browsing the web for me

Image Transcription: Meme

STOP USING CSS

* HTML WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE GIVEN CLASSES
* YEARS OF MARKUP yet NO REAL-WORLD USE FOUND for styling beyond <TABLE>
* Wanted to center content for a laugh? We had a tool for that: It was called "<CENTER>"
* "Yes please align that content exactly 32.89% left. Please align 59.0px down"
    - Statements dreams up by the utterly deranged

LOOK at what FRONT-END Devs  have been demanding your Respect for all this time.
(This is REAL CSS. done by REAL Devs)

[Three screenshots of CSS code, each one marked with a number of red question marks. The first screenshot has five question marks and reads as follows:]

h1 {
        font-size: .75em;
        position: absolute;
        bottom: 20px;
        width: 94%;
        left: 2%;
}

[The second screenshot has eight question marks and reads as follows:]

*{
    font-size: 30px;

}
    q::before {
  content: "«";
  color: blue;
]

q::after {
  content: "»";
  color: red;
}

[The third screenshot has sixteen question marks and reads as follows:]

#header ul a:focus, #header ul a:active,
#header ul a:hover {
    background-color: #5A5A5A;
    outline-color: -moz-use-text-color:
    outline-style: none;
    outline-width: medium;
}

[The screenshots end.]

"Hello center that div please"

They have played us for absolute fools

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The web killed the Internet.

JavaScript killed the web.

CSS defiled its corpse.

Honestly and without any trace of irony, I wish CSS would die and be replaced by maybe half a dozen new HTML tags to support a few specific responsive design patterns.

CSS runs counter to the concept of HTML. Web design used to be inherently user-centric. The designer was not supposed to have much of a say in how it looked on a client's system, because that was up to the client. The designer only provided high-level hints like "this is a paragraph" or "this is emphasized". The browser decided how a paragraph should be displayed, which fonts to use, etc.

Over time, visual designers clawed more and more control from the user, much to the detriment of the entire rest of the world.

99% of web sites would be better if they conformed to basic semantic markup. Low-level design parameters should not exist on the web.

It's a straight line from CSS to Google's new trusted web bullshit. It's all about wresting control away from the user and giving it to the site designer. Fuck you, site designer. My eyeballs do not belong to you.

The problem is that HTML was not designed to be a layout description. Your browser was to decide.

So, to force HTML to be a layout description rather than simple markup, we have this mess.

HTML != TeX

you mock but as soon as these rounded corners are gone everything becomes so .... pointy.

I too look forward to all of our websites looking like they're from the 90s upon the abolition of CSS.

Oh, got that layout looking all nice and modern?

Be a shame if somebody... tried to email it!

The future of HTML is classless, stateless and moneyless! 🏴

You're never supposed to use pixels in CSS anyway; you should bare minimum use percentages to account for different screen sizes to make the designs responsive and not look terrible on different screen sizes.

Really though it's a shame that so many devs still try to treat the web like print where they have full control over the layout at any given time. Even after the death of Flash and the introduction of smartphones and their need for fluid layouts. Meanwhile concepts like progressive enhancement got left behind.

At least we've got flexbox and grid now.

As a frontend dev I hate frontend. CSS is not even the main issue.

Fuck Jest and having to mock libraries. I'm gonna go backend in Go or something like that ASAP.

I'm sure that means something.

laughs and cries in backend dev that knows flexbox.

My main issue isn't even that CSS exists, or its current functionalities. It's the expectation that, if you're creating a web page, you must use CSS extensively, and ditch every single "pure" HTML feature that might solve your problem.

On a practical level, what's intrinsically wrong with the center tag? Or tables for alignment? Those might be bad in some situations, but they're rather succinct and simple ways to get what you want.

"But what if in the future..." - address future problems in the future. As soon as they appear - not before or after that.

I just use Bootstrap and don't worry about learning CSS. Probably because I suck as CSS.

But if I can use a few Bootstrap classes to make my app 'presentable' and 'professional-looking' and spend my time on what's important...functionality and security...then I'm happy to.