Why do LCD displays need blank intervals ?

[LastExceed]

I understand that these intervals were initially implemented to give CRT monitors time to realign the electron gun, but why do we still configure front and back porches for LCD displays ? I've tried using a custom resolution with all porches set to 1 and it seems to work just fine.

And second question, what exactly is sync width ? the blog post defines it as "duration of the sync pulse". if I understood correctly, the sync pulse is used to keep the pixel clock synchronized, which makes sense to me, but why does it have a duration ?