Thread

Looking for advice on which is the most popular amongst designers and which is the best supported.

Thank you
Lee

I have my own “framework” - a set of CSS and HTML files that I use to start every project. It’s always under continuous revision and change as my workflow evolves and it’s got little bits and pieces of many different frameworks. I don’t think anyone should shoehorn their workflow to fit into any framework that someone else develops. Take the best parts that work for you and include them in your own workflow.

I have my own “framework” - a set of CSS and HTML files that I use to start every project. It’s always under continuous revision and change as my workflow evolves and it’s got little bits and pieces of many different frameworks. I don’t think anyone should shoehorn their workflow to fit into any framework that someone else develops. Take the best parts that work for you and include them in your own workflow.

Agreed.

I’ve tried them all. Each has strengths and weaknesses which depend on your workflow, site design techniques, skill level, etc. CSS is as much a mess as HTML/XHTML/HTML5 so there’s no silver bullet that’ll kill the beast and give you a perfect CSS framework.

Unless you build it yourself.

The framework I use for most new projects takes a little of this from that framework, and a little of that from this framework, and so on. Find the pieces that work for you.

Hi Lee,

As these fellows site, I suppose it depends a lot on project, but I really enjoy Nathan Smith’s 960 Grid System.  It’s customizable, super low weight and includes a well thought out reset.  I’ve found myself going back to it over and over when I’m not making my own framework.

I have been playing with this http://html5reset.org/, but 960 is the most popular.

I’ll add a thumbs up to http://960.gs—I’ve been using it quite a bit lately—12 column or 24 column, good reset—works well for me!

I use the 960 most of the time also

960.gs and blueprint are great for setting up a site, but I always find it gets sticky months later when doing maintenance. I’ve been looking at this recently but have no had a chance to use it on a site: http://lessframework.com/
Anyone have any experience with it?

I was forced to use blueprint by an employer.  It was slow at first, but now that I have the hang of it, I can bang sites out pretty quick using it.  Its now my framework of choice.

Some of the users of eeSiteKit introduced me to YAML a few years ago. Like EE, it is so well documented, I felt a little overwhelmed at first with it, but I spent a weekend reading the docs and I’ve never looked back. We start all of our sites with YAML now and we manage to launch a custom new site just about every 10 business days.

If you only have about 30 min. to check it out, then visit these links:

The YAML Builder
See a few of the Advanced layout examples (click “next example” in the nav).
Understanding Subtemplates (sample the docs while you are at it)
Meet the Author - Dirk Jesse - as he and Nils Pooker discuss “Everything you should know about CSS Frameworks!”

I use Blueprint on most of my sites.  But I have been wanting to try out the new media query frameworks http://lessframework.com/ or http://cssgrid.net/ look interesting.

Like many others here, I’ve been using 960 grid pretty solidly for some time and always found it really good, easy to pick up and speeds up build time noticeably.

All that said, I’ve been having a bit of a play with http://cssgrid.net and think I will begin using this as a default framework in the near future. A fixed 960 grid feels a bit dated now to me. It’s not taking full advantage of space available on many large screens, but also not flexible for the increasing use of small/mobile devices. So I want to use a framework that’s suitable for the increasing proliferation of screen sizes sites are now being accessed on.

But whatever you use, don’t be put off using a framework as cheating or anything. It saves a load of time you can put to much better use.

I’ve been using HTML5 Boilerplate.

I’ve used Blueprint for rapid prototyping. I’m a bit of a markup / semantics purist, so I don’t like using so many div tags for layouts. The typography portion of Blueprint is good for quickly getting a nice baseline style.

I think the idea with these frameworks is you pick and choose the portions that work for you and your needs, rather than forcibly adapt your workflow or coding style to fit them.

Shawn, regarding HTML5 Boilerplate, are you taking advantage of the build script?  If so, how are you working it into your EE dev workflow?

I’ve only messed around with it on static code, but my guess is it’ll have issues with the EE template tags?

Thanks,
Doug

I like csswizardry.com/typogridphy/preview - it uses ems instead of px as a base unit.