[okcando]

This is nearly the opposite of what I would want from HTML or the web.

A fixed layout is not going to work for all devices.

Such a choice is tantamount to deciding that some classes of devices are not going to be supported, which may be a reasonable choice but better to make good choices in the HTML and CSS and let the devices try to make something usable of it rather than giving them a fixed window into a layout intended for another.

[buboard]

> A fixed layout is not going to work for all devices.

Designers are also making their choice with HTML nowadays : Desktop is not supported anymore. Look e.g. at twitter, a billion dollars company switching to mobile web only. Flash could easily implement media queries to re-layout itself.

[Ajedi32]

> Look e.g. at twitter, a billion dollars company switching to mobile web only

Source? Twitter.com currently works just fine on Desktop. Even dynamically adjusts its layout to look good on a bunch of different screen sizes.

[Guest0918231]

Flash could be used for responsive layouts. They were actually far easier to design in Flash than in HTML/CSS. No floating, flexing, grids, nesting HTML elements. You just set the objects x and y axis in Flash to the bottom center or wherever you wanted the object to remain, and you were done.

[beernutz]

One hundred times, THIS!

The layout engine in flash was REALLY well thought out, and allowed for simple constraints that would allow for things to grow or shrink based on screen size. You could anchor buttons and they would move properly, all without having to worry about things breaking across browsers.

If someone would re-implement just this feature along from flash i would be REALLY excited to use it!

So far i dont think there is really much in the way of "constraint based" layout engines that are easy to use for the web is there?

[thyselius]

This is how I code html nowadays, positioning divs using js, works like a charm.

[tabtab]

Re: "A fixed layout is not going to work for all devices."

Agreed, but not all apps need watch-to-wall scaling. All our internal "productivity" apps run on desktops and nobody has complained. Certain check-status-of-project kinds of apps may be something people want on mobile, but not heavy data chomping/sifting.

Different things need different tools and standards. Even web apps don't really work right on mobile unless you test and adjust for mobile. Using Twitter Bootstrap etc. does not guarantee an app is usable on mobile.

And sometimes it seems it would be easier to make two different apps for different devices rather than one-size-fits-all, as it's nearly impossible to optimize the UI to automatically adjust to both using Bootstrap etc. Workable on both, maybe. Optimized for both, no. There may be handful of people in the world who can pull that off, but you won't find them.