--- In [email protected], "supertodda" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > and I understand how neat the new constraint layout is, but it's not > cool enough to break all my code. I don't understand why we can't > have both.
I'm a long-time Web developer and graphic designer that has recently learned Flex, and I absolutely agree. I care that the markup I create is readable, writeable, and easily understandable. Putting markup for layout (such as ConstraintColumns) far away from its content makes it difficult to visually understand the relationship between layout and content, and makes it harder if not impossible to do cell/row/column-specific styling both manually and programmatically, which HTML coders have relied on for years. Many designers still use <table>, <tr>, and <td> tags today (or display:table via CSS), because it's so easy to read, understand, and create sophisticated, nested, and dynamically resizeable layouts with them. That mechanism ended up being so useful that even the W3C couldn't yank it out of the hands of designers, and is why <table> is the ninth most used tag on the Web today, according to Google. There are very few HTML- based applications that don't make use of the core table layout algorithm. If Flex was created to allow one to use a markup language to quickly make and edit rich, sophisticated layouts and interfaces, then removing Grid is a step backwards. If Flex was created to make it easier for Web developers to develop Flash apps, then it's also a step backwards. Once you have a markup-based system, you can no longer depend on everyone using GUI tools only to generate it, so it must be as easy as possible to write, read, and design with manually. That what we've learned from the Web. Otherwise, why use human readable markup in the first place? The new constraints model complements but can never fully replace the functionality that Grid provides for both coders and designers. Please bring back Grid permanently!
