Besides Mark’s writing, take a look at the comments, especially where Simon Willison gets in on the action. Simon seems to share my view that non-semantic class name may be a necessary evil — and he articulates the position well. It’s not that we think semantics are unimportant, it’s just that we also think practically is important. Simon says:
(The non-semantic nature of Blueprint’s class naming scheme) does bother me, but what bothers me more is how incredibly difficult it is to write maintainable CSS that can be updated and managed by a team of people.
Exactly.
http://www.markboulton.co.uk/journal/comments/blueprint_a_css_framework/
001 // Bret // 08.14.2007 // 12:31 PM
I’m about to start playing with Blueprint, but I was wondering what you thought of this comment.
002 // Jeff Croft // 08.14.2007 // 1:05 PM
I would agree with Nathan that our sites started to look too much the same — however, I don’t really think it was because of our grid framework. I think it was because of designers at World Online reusing styles that weren’t part of the framework. Styles that were originally intended to be for LJWorld.com, and then got used in other places. The framework styles are all so bland and basic that they can’t really achieve a sameness, I don’t think.
Bear in mind, too, that sometimes sameness is exactly what you want across multiple sites. If that’s what you’re going for, you can build a framework that encapsulates more style information than a generic one like Blueprint.