Fresh CSS constructs move web design beyond ticky-tacky little boxes

The World Wide Web’s decades-long tyranny of box design is finally coming to an end. A new set of CSS features – including the shape() function, and the border-shape and corner-shape properties – offers web designers and their AI agents a broader palette for laying out content in a more fluid manner. When the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) published its first standard for web page layout in 1996, web sites emulated the grid-defined layouts of academic papers, newspapers, and magazines. At the time, graphics drivers, and browser rendering engines were all in a relatively primitive state. Developers were also trying to grapple with a new medium and generally found that flowing text within a defined space was much easier when the geometric coordinates of that space were kept as simple as possible. But now print is basically dead, webdevs are savvier (and if not, AI is happy to help), and Lord knows GPUs are more powerful. …