4 ms·

Battle of the CSS Frameworks

36 points by qhoxie 18y ago

jhancock 18y ago
Useful info. The author thinks BlueprintCSS + Tripoli make a great combination. I use Blueprint but in an effort to get away from understanding more, I would hate to integrate Tripoli with Blueprint myself. Does anyone have a good stock solution for such a combination?
- qhoxie 18y ago
  Yes, he does :) http://capsizedesigns.com/blog/2008/04/bluetripcss-a-fusion-of-blueprint-and-tripoli/ http://capsizedesigns.com/blog/2008/04/bluetripcss-a-fusion-...
compay 18y ago
Blueprint to me seems like a conceptual step backwards. While it does still separate markup from style physically, conceptually it's just moving the layout descriptions from the HTML attributes into the classes; there's 0 semantic value to the classes. It looks like the design still ends up being tightly coupled with the markup. The results are beautiful, and I can see how designers might find it easier to work with conceptually. But from the perspective of a programmer I find it pretty unappealing.
- arockwell 18y ago
  I agree with you that its a step backwards, but I find that I have to add divs and classes all the type to my html that are there purely for layout reasons. Browser support just isn't there yet for truly semantic markup.
- cstejerean 18y ago
  blueprint is not a framework for something you should deploy a site on, it's a framework for prototyping and hacking on your layouts. the idea is to change it to something more semantic once you've figured things out (same way as an earlier article today mentioned using HSL instead of RGB for color prototyping and switching to RGB once you've figured it out).
brandonkm 18y ago
I was very dissatisfied when I used blueprint for a recent project. For a grid based layout i've found YUI grids to be a lot better.
thomasmallen 18y ago
Really, you don't need a framework to write CSS. It isn't even very helpful if you know what you're doing. For a rapid prototype, you might save yourself five minutes by using a framework, and you'll come out with crappy code that you can't use outside of the prototype. I can see the value for wireframing, but really, the browser defaults do just as good a job in that case. This is why I've largely stopped development on my own CSS framework. If you watch the video at http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/reset/ http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/reset/ , the main engineer states explicitly that you shouldn't be using YUI CSS for production sites.
- pxlpshr 18y ago
  LinkedIn uses the framework on their site, and they gave a number of great reasons why. http://yuiblog.com/blog/2008/06/05/implementation-focus-linkedin/ http://yuiblog.com/blog/2008/06/05/implementation-focus-link...
pmsaue0 18y ago
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=218597 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=218597
vladocar 18y ago
This is news from April!? Interesting my Framework "Hartija" is on the list :)
KWD 18y ago
I've planned to actually look at YUI grids. This was a nice discussion, and I need to check out the others too.
DocSavage 18y ago
One advantage of YUI grids over Blueprint was the ability to easily switch to fluid layouts by modifying a single DOM id. Took another look at Blueprint, though, and saw a fluid plugin is now available.

36 points by qhoxie 18y ago

Useful info. The author thinks BlueprintCSS + Tripoli make a great combination. I use Blueprint but in an effort to get away from understanding more, I would hate to integrate Tripoli with Blueprint myself. Does anyone have a good stock solution for such a combination?

qhoxie 18y ago
Yes, he does :) http://capsizedesigns.com/blog/2008/04/bluetripcss-a-fusion-of-blueprint-and-tripoli/ http://capsizedesigns.com/blog/2008/04/bluetripcss-a-fusion-...

compay 18y ago

Blueprint to me seems like a conceptual step backwards. While it does still separate markup from style physically, conceptually it's just moving the layout descriptions from the HTML attributes into the classes; there's 0 semantic value to the classes. It looks like the design still ends up being tightly coupled with the markup. The results are beautiful, and I can see how designers might find it easier to work with conceptually. But from the perspective of a programmer I find it pretty unappealing.

arockwell 18y ago
I agree with you that its a step backwards, but I find that I have to add divs and classes all the type to my html that are there purely for layout reasons. Browser support just isn't there yet for truly semantic markup.
cstejerean 18y ago
blueprint is not a framework for something you should deploy a site on, it's a framework for prototyping and hacking on your layouts. the idea is to change it to something more semantic once you've figured things out (same way as an earlier article today mentioned using HSL instead of RGB for color prototyping and switching to RGB once you've figured it out).

brandonkm 18y ago

I was very dissatisfied when I used blueprint for a recent project. For a grid based layout i've found YUI grids to be a lot better.

thomasmallen 18y ago

Really, you don't need a framework to write CSS. It isn't even very helpful if you know what you're doing. For a rapid prototype, you might save yourself five minutes by using a framework, and you'll come out with crappy code that you can't use outside of the prototype. I can see the value for wireframing, but really, the browser defaults do just as good a job in that case. This is why I've largely stopped development on my own CSS framework. If you watch the video at http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/reset/ http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/reset/ , the main engineer states explicitly that you shouldn't be using YUI CSS for production sites.

pxlpshr 18y ago
LinkedIn uses the framework on their site, and they gave a number of great reasons why. http://yuiblog.com/blog/2008/06/05/implementation-focus-linkedin/ http://yuiblog.com/blog/2008/06/05/implementation-focus-link...

pmsaue0 18y ago

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=218597 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=218597

vladocar 18y ago

This is news from April!? Interesting my Framework "Hartija" is on the list :)

KWD 18y ago

I've planned to actually look at YUI grids. This was a nice discussion, and I need to check out the others too.

DocSavage 18y ago

One advantage of YUI grids over Blueprint was the ability to easily switch to fluid layouts by modifying a single DOM id. Took another look at Blueprint, though, and saw a fluid plugin is now available.