Layout on the web has always been very difficult because of a lack of real tools to accomplish this task. All manner of techniques from tables to floats, positioning, and display properties have been used in an attempt to emulate designs and create usable interfaces for the browser. While disparate all these techniques have one thing in common: they are by and large hacks.
With the advent of Flexbox and latterly CSS Grid, as well as a whole host of other layout properties such as object-fit, writing modes, shapes and box alignment (to mention just a few) we are finally getting the tools we need to do layout on the web.
Recently, I gave a talk at a FEDSA meetup tracing the history of web layouts and demonstrated some of the new techniques at our disposal to create modern, designed interfaces with our new layout tools.
The talk was also recorded and you can watch it on the FEDSA YouTube Channel.