What No One Told You About Z-Index
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Submission timeline
2007–2026One 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 orderDon't we love CSS? it's so easy to do both complex things like 3D animations but also simple things like position something centered horizontally or vertically by just saying align:center, oh, sorry, it's margin: 0 auto, right, no? it's left:50% with a relative inside an absolute div, or was that an absolute div inside a relative span? ok so doing it vertically is really easy, it's valign:middle, oh, wait, I'm confusing yucky table layout, it's much simpler, it's, ehm, line-height…
I think the problem is not that few people reads the spec, but having picked a name that was now declarative. Something like 'context-order' would give a better hint that the stacking is not as simple as one might think. Choosing css property names is like designing the UI of css
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11261842
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
- Total points
- 431
- Total comments
- 123
100+ points or 50+ comments
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
Every submission
| Date | Title as submitted | By | Points | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013-01-15 | What No One Told You About Z-IndexFirst breakout · Best thread | philipwalton | 282 | 96 |
| 2015-06-16 | What No One Told You About Z-index (2012) | rtpg | 3 | 0 |
| 2015-06-30 | What No One Told You About Z-Index (2012) | alanfranzoni | 1 | 0 |
| 2016-03-10 | What No One Told You About Z-Index (2013)Latest 20+ point return | caffeinewriter | 141 | 26 |
| 2018-04-12 | What No One Told You About Z-Index | vinnyglennon | 1 | 0 |
| 2022-04-26 | What no one told you about HTML z-index (2013) | wanderer42 | 2 | 0 |
| 2026-04-20 | What No One Told You About Z-Index (2013) | downbad_ | 1 | 1 |