That Standards Guy

August Pulse

August 31st, 2007

Pulse. A commentary on the web development resources I saved to del.icio.us this month. I read and digest a lot more than this!

A lot of work and opinion on CSS frameworks since the release of Blueprint and Tripoli. A lot of anti-opinion which I can understand to a point but I detect tones of elitism in a lot of the commentary to be honest. Come on guys, do you never re-use your CSS from other projects? Never use the same reset.css over and over? Never dug out the fonts.css file with a vertical rhythm of 12px/1.5em from last month? Never used the math from a previous project to apply to your latest multi-column layout? Bollocks you haven’t. I bet you’re using your own un-published frameworks to a degree. Ah, but of course, these other frameworks are unsemantic too. Show me where in Blueprint’s or YUI Grids’ documentation it says to replace an H2 with a div? That’s right, it doesn’t. Like every tool it can be abused I guess but it’s got to be better than tables-based layout, surely? Class names unsemantic you say? Pfft, like your typical web visitor even cares. Get over yourself and get a real deadline at the same time. If it bothers you that much, use a framework to beat out your prototype and then rename the classes to suit the content (and delete the unused selectors).

At the least, these frameworks might see the death of a few more tables-based designs and at its best enable a lot of novices to experience and understand vertical rhythm and how to put together interesting combinations of columns that work cross-browser. After working with a few projects they too may have outgrown the one-size-fits-all framework and really understand CSS as a result.

I have only one caveat to apply to CSS frameworks - make sure the content makes sense when you disable CSS because that is how a screen reader sees it.

On other topics you’ll notice that a majority of the links are design-oriented, reflecting my view that my HTML/CSS skills are top-drawer and that personally as well as professionally I am worrying about how websites come about in the first place - no, not from your customer providing a layout in Word but coming to you with a problem that needs to be solved. I have three big projects at work at the moment that I am actually managing by following Kelly Goto’s Web Redesign Process. So far it’s working great for both the customer and myself.

Pick of the bunch: