CSS Frameworks

[Freakish_05]

Hi All,

I've been out of the web development game for a couple of years and have been asked to get involved on a couple of projects.

I'm definitely more 'developer' than 'designer', feeling much more comfortable looking at databases and logic than messing about with the UI.

Back in the day, circa 2011, I used the Blueprint framework and jQuery but after doing some searching on google, the majority of the frameworks have died off with the exception of jQuery and html5boilerplate.

My question is as follows: With HTML5 becoming more mainstream, how are people catering for cross browser deployments? Is there a need anymore? Have all of the underlying rendering engines FINALLY synced up to the W3C specs (looking at you IE)?

Thoughts and comments greatly appreciated,

- Jason

 

[Tripnologist]

Most front end frameworks these days are using CSS Preprocessors.
The two main ones are LESS and SASS, and each have decent front end frameworks based off of them.
SASS is easily the better of the two, but unless you're on a mac, it's a bit more a commitment to start using. Deffo worth it though.

LESS
Twitter Bootstrap

SASS
Compass (Don't let the appearance of the website fool you. Compass is amazing.)
Foundation


Cross browser is still very much alive, but how far back you want to go is up to you entirely. IE6 is pretty much ignored completely, unless you have to cater to it and IE7 is starting to be dropped as well.
CSS3 is being used considerably more these days, with a focus on progressive enhancement. (IE: rounded corners for browsers that support it, square for those that don't. Gradients for those that support it, with a solid bg or gradient img background as a fallback for those that don't. etc. etc.)

 

[Freakish_05]

Thanks for the info Tripnologist. CSS Tech has certainly come on leaps and bounds over the last couple of years!

 

[edwardcasbon1]

Rather than use a CSS framework I'd suggest using a reset stylesheet, like the Eric Meyer reset, or the one in HTML5 Boilerplate.

You can then tailor the rest of your CSS for the project that you're working on.

That's how I prefer to work anyway. If you're sensible about your design/build you can modularise elements of the design, using them in multiple places, making your CSS easier.

Good luck with your projects

 

[robotSocks]

so helpful

 

[Tripnologist]

Rather than use a CSS framework I'd suggest using a reset stylesheet, like the Eric Meyer reset, or the one in HTML5 Boilerplate.

You can then tailor the rest of your CSS for the project that you're working on.

That's how I prefer to work anyway. If you're sensible about your design/build you can modularise elements of the design, using them in multiple places, making your CSS easier.

Good luck with your projects

Have you tried Compass? It's basically just the SASS preprocessor, with modular mixins you can pick and choose from, so you can use as little or as much of it as you want.
Some of the mixins are great time savers (like the vertical rhythm one for example) and it also does concatenation and minification.
There is even a sprite utility which makes creating and updating sprites an absolute breeze.

Used correctly, CSS Preprocessors are a valuable tool and Compass makes things just that little bit quicker I find.