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Grid Style Sheets – CSS polyfills from the future

gridstylesheets.org Software & code Software projects Web & internet Candidate

Resurfaced independently across 3 calendar years, with breakout response in 2 of them.

submissions
6
submitters
6
observed span
2014–2016
peak thread · 96 comments
225 pts
latest 20+ return · 2015-06-08
199 pts

Submission timeline

2007–2026

One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.

First comments on top threads

HN comment order

If this is what I think it is (a new layout engine that runs in JavaScript, so that CSS is used just for styling, not layout), it is what I've been waiting YEARS for. Unfortunately, the site is deafeningly silent on specifics. What browsers does it support? Is there any kind of tutorial for getting started? When would this be appropriate to use, and when not? What is performance like with rendering times, both on desktop and mobile? Window resizing?…

As GUI dev who worked with Apple's AutoLayout extensively I can confidently say constraint-based layout is a trap. It looks like more intuitive way to go on simple examples, but complexity spikes quickly as number of controls goes up. It's more complicated, more resilient to changes (harder to maintain), easy to get wrong, hard to understand and debug, bugs generally look uglier (what would be minor misplacement in CSS often becomes overlapping or clipping). It does not support word wrapping…

Can someone explain to me what this is good for in real deployment scenarios? I'm moderately experience with front and back-end stacks, but have little understanding what this is about.

Very interesting css preprocessor/layout engine combination, kudos 1999. Many people annoyed with css might love this quite a bit. I wonder about the performance implications. The layout engine obviously has to run in javascript and thus it will result in a slower startup time (gss has to parse the logic) and the layout itself will be obviously slower than "native css".

The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.

Breakout years
2

100+ points or 50+ comments

Total points
456

reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking

Total comments
195

reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking

Every submission

DateTitle as submittedByPointsComments
2014-01-07Constraint-Driven CSSDomKM110
2014-02-25Grid Style Sheetsjashkenas102
2014-03-06Grid Style Sheets – CSS polyfills from the futureFirst breakout · Best threadBrajeshwar22596
2014-09-25Grid Style Sheets (GSS)afhammad71
2015-06-08Grid Style Sheets – Replace CSS with a Constraint-SolverLatest 20+ point returnaeontech19996
2016-01-28Grid Style Sheets: constraint-based CSS polyfills from the futurejitl40