How is it possible to devise such a feeble system?

Here's my question: How is it possible to devise a system -- a second 
generation system no less -- for laying out and specifying the presentational 
aspects of HTML documents that is so feeble that it can not even be used 
accomplish the most elementary goal of horizontally and vertically centering a 
DIV containing some text within another DIV?  Well, for starters, you have to 
provide no way to perform vertical alignment in this context.  I mean, who 
would ever need _that_?  You also have to make absolutely certain that you 
render the margin / padding mechanism useless by computing percentage values 
based on the width of the containing block.  Meanwhile, you should pronounce 
disdainfully that authors should no longer use tables strictly for layout 
purposes, as though you had enabled them not to, which you undoubtedly should 
have, but inexplicably did not do.  Does this sound about right so far?  Is my 
ignorance or lack of understanding of CSS 2 to blame, or is this language 
really so weak?

Received on Wednesday, 24 October 2001 09:39:28 UTC