Compass and SASS are great tools makes layout a breeze.

Interesting link, more for the places it took me than for the content itself, I really don’t like CSS frameworks you see.

A friend and I are working on something right now and he was supposed to do the basic mockup, while I did got the beers ready - what he gave me looked pretty good, but when I went under the hood, I found that he had used BluePrint and the code (as well as the folder structure) was the ugliest I had ever seen in my life!

My mate said he liked it because it took care of some of the problems with CSS - pffft! No it doesn’t. It makes things harder. Just learn CSS. Go to lynda.com, vtc.com and watch some videos on it.

I think the fact that these frameworks are springing up is a symptom of the fact that people aren’t getting enough decent tutorials on CSS. Three words for you ‘A List Apart’. Done, sorted. No more problems with CSS.

The best way to do CSS, regardless of whether or not your background is in programming, is by learning it from scratch and doing everything by hand, without the use of frameworks.

What I will say however is that the link you posted also contains a link to this: http://www.thegridsystem.org/ not the nicest site in the world, but it does in-turn link to this artlicle on Fluid Griuds - lovely: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/fluidgrids

So, thanks a lot, I got a lot out of it.

Steve

Hmm Steve, I think you are wrong and I will try to put down the reasons why:

“I found that he had used BluePrint and the code (as well as the folder structure) was the ugliest I had ever seen in my life!”

With compass-blueprint the blueprint framework is abstracted away and you can overide only the parts you need to you don’t need any special folder structure as all the sass code you use can be in 1 file.

“My mate said he liked it because it took care of some of the problems with CSS - pffft! No it doesn’t. It makes things harder. Just learn CSS. Go to lynda.com, vtc.com and watch some videos on it. “

Sorry but I don’t have the inclination time or patience to work through and remember every last quirck and bug of IE 6 & 7 and repeat the fixes for these problems throughout my CSS code. Compass does solve the main problems of cross browser compatability. Saying “Go Learn CSS” or “Goto Lynda.com” does not make these problems go away. I know CSS enough not to deal with the IE crapola.

“I think the fact that these frameworks are springing up is a symptom of the fact that people aren’t getting enough decent tutorials on CSS.”

No they are a symtom that CSS support across browsers is crappy and it was never designed as a layout engine.

“The best way to do CSS, regardless of whether or not your background is in programming, is by learning it from scratch and doing everything by hand, without the use of frameworks. “

Thats like saying the best way to design a website is from hand and not using any frameworks like Rails.