Yet another front-end web framework, consisting largely of CSS (but this one also has some JavaScript). I haven’t really looked into it yet, so I can’t really comment on it.
For my tastes, I’ve yet to see the “perfect CSS framework,” (Blueprint’s first release was the closest — since then, it’s moved away from many of my preferences), but I’m really happy to see the concept taking off, since I wrote about it in A List Apart. Despite some negativity from other prominent members of the web standards community, I still really believe in the ideas of code re-use and standardization amongst teams on things like class names and markup conventions.
It still baffles me that some of the same people who go on and on about microformats don’t want to see standardization in class name for other things. Weird.
001 // Justin Lilly // 04.07.2008 // 6:28 AM
Have you checked out http://960.gs? It seems to be a bit closer to what I want blueprint to be. It doesn’t set defaults for you, just smoothes over the edges. I’m also a big fan of how it has a gutter on both sides of the column instead of just the right side (leading to the
lastclass needing to be added in blueprint's case)002 // Darren Jones // 04.08.2008 // 12:39 AM
Hey Jeff, thanks for the plug! It was actually your article on ALA that inspired me to put Sparkl together.
I agree with you that using common markup conventions have many advantages - easier to work in teams, easier to reuse code, easier to interact with other sites, easier for users to override your styles (in fact pretty much all of the advantages of microformats). It also makes development faster, as your not having to constantly reinvent the wheel everytime you write some markup, making it a DRY methodology. I really don’t understand the negativity towards this either.
DAZ
003 // Darren Jones // 04.08.2008 // 12:52 AM
@Justin:
Sparkl also has grids with margins on both sides. The big advantage of Sparkl is that the grids are completely flexible. They will flex to fit inside the browser window, so are not constrained by a fixed width. You can make them elastic by setting the container width in ems and if fixed width is your thing, it will still work if you set the width in px. The markup is also fairly minimal - just give the container a class of ‘five-col grid’ and bingo, all the child elements will fit nicely into five columns.
You can see examples of Sparkl’s grids here (at the bottom of the page): http://dazzl.co.uk/sparkl-css-framework/vanilla.htm
And an elastic grid example here: http://dazzl.co.uk/sparkl-css-framework/gridlastic.htm
DAZ