[Hover the box to expose the pieces]
Here is another example.
At the time, no gradient background, no rounded corners.
So for a box like this, we'd actually have to create 9 images.
Four corners, four sides, a center. All custom made just for this box.
The custom images and repeated backgrounds created the illusion of one shape.
Today, not only do we have borders, corners, gradients, but we have so many
ways to draw shapes such as clip-path, and the shape function,
and more coming, with the border-shape property.
We didn't do all this because we loved to create images and spend hours
combining them in interesting ways in HTML.
We did this because we wanted decorations, and interactions.
And images were the only way to do it.
We abused the tools we had at the time because the web platform
couldn't yet express what we wanted.
By web platform, I mean the set of technologies used to create sites.
And this abuse was evidence of an unmet need.
Eventually, the web learned.