Thursday, September 20, 2007

A Blueprint for Style

For a Web developer, starting any new Web project usually begins with reusing universal markup, styles and scripts that have worked well on other projects. To keep yourself from wasting time pulling a snippet of code from here and a snippet of code from there, it would be best to start off with a good base. Like any other programming language that relies on libraries and frameworks (like JavaScript for example), your Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) can follow the same concept.

This past month I’ve spent some time applying a CSS framework called Blueprint written by Olav Bjorkoy to ease development and kick-start my new project. Blueprint boasts improvements in comparison to older CSS frameworks like Yahoo UI Library stripping away some bloated code and file size. Whether you use a framework like Blueprint, Yahoo UI Library, or create one yourself, the addition may greatly overcome hurdles for yourself and your team. There is also the benefit in learning from and relying on the combined knowledge of the web professionals that it took to create most of the initial CSS frameworks. Like Blueprint, a good CSS framework should include the following components:

• An easily customizable grid and typographic baseline
• Some default typography
• CSS reset for default browser styles
• A stylesheet for printing
• No bloat of any kind

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