Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic — Arthur C. Clarke

For me, CSS has advanced enough to become indistinguishable from magic. Black magic.

I have no problem with simple hexes, spells, and curses: This heading will have this font; That div will have this border; This span will have this background color; But, once it moves past that and into the realm of layouts, box models, and forms, things get a little shaky. That stuff is powerful black magic. Stuff that I can barely control.

Too many times I used a layout incantation to find it was the wrong one. Or, the incantation was correct, but its effect varied from browser to browser. When this happened, I often came across dark mages who promised help with my spell. All that was required was a sacrifice of purity and/or readability.

“Make a sacrifice to Tantek,” they would say. And, maybe it worked. If it didn’t, they would say “You must use some holly as part of the rite.” If that didn’t work, the mages would encourage me to look elsewhere. “You must consult the oracle!”

In the end, I typically found something that worked, or worked well enough. And, really, it was such a small sacrifice. But why do I feel so bad about it?