I guess I’m showing my Swing background here, but most desktop systems have some kind of explicit layout management system. Basically a layout manager is a way of explicitly defining how elements inside a container are automatically laid out. Right now, css allows most of the tools needed for layout management, but provides them in a way that can be awkward and difficult. CSS3 will make some things better, like the new template layout, but having explicit layout managers could make a lot of simple things simple again.

Here’s a really simple example:

#my-container{
layout-manager:horizontal;
}


No floats, no clears, just a simple horizontal layout. I think that css provides a lot of lower level layout functionality that I would never get rid of, I just think a higher abstraction layer would be very powerful and helpful. Just imagine:


form{
layout-manager:form;
}


for simple pretty forms.

Concerning your third point, I’m not understand I understand the layout manager idea (admittedly this is likely due to my inexperience). I absolutely agree with your critique or current css though. It seems like it puts such a a strain on developers to do the simplest things which could easily be alleviated with variables. Though at what point does css stop and javascript take the reigns, or do you see this ambiguity as a strength?