Can Someone Recommend a Bells and Whistles CSS Framework

Can someone recommend a bells and whistles CSS framework?

Compass really changes things for you.

In addition to providing everything from grids to mixins like horizontal-list, it's built on top of SASS so you get stuff like reuse and variables and other such things.

It makes things you don't even realize are painful pain-free. Definitely worth looking over.

Which css grid system should I learn?

I've used YUI Grids on several sites and found it, in combination with the Fonts and Reset components, to provide very high quality cross browser compatible sites. It's design satisfies different goals to 960.gs and a quick look at your site's storyboards will indicate which is more appropriate.

YUI Grids can be nested achieve subdivison of elements and generally I find it easy to work with.

I'd say that use of a reset css is crucial, and work with whatever grid system you find most comfortable.

What CSS tools (framework,grids system, IDE,..) do I need for starting web design?

First, if you don't intend to be a web designer, I'd suggest outsourcing your CSS. There are several websites where you can supply HTML or a Photoshop design and have it coded up for well under a grand (1k). Or get HTML/CSS designs free.

Then there is one thing you need to know and another two you need to work out:

1. all HTML should be written in a semantic and valid manner: semantic = properly ordered headings, lists, no excessive divs etc.; valid = will pass WC3 validation tests. None of this is rocket science, but is still a skill that needs to be learned. Andy Clarke's Transcending CSS is a great book on semantic HTML/CSS. For ease of maintenance, the HTML and CSS should be tidy and consistently indented, etc.

2. you need to determine whether you'll be needing an admin backend and database for managing content, or if you're just building a site consisting of static pages (i.e. html and css files, images and other media etc.). If it's the former, that's a whole other learning curve :-)

3. what are your best skills? If you're a good designer, get other people to write the HTML/CSS, or use a ready-made template (there are many on the web) and customise it. Here's a good start for multi-column layouts. If you're a programmer, learn to use a framework like Django (Python), Titanium (Perl), something smaller in Ruby (because Ruby on Rails is a bit big to start with) or one in your favourite language.

Good CSS is a craft, and simplicity is the essence, but if you want to learn enough to get started, my advice would be to:

1. understand inheritance (the 'cascade' in CSS) and the fact that anything can be a 'block', so don't use lots of nested divs just to apply a style. Instead, apply the style to the HTML element itself, or to the element only when it appears in a parent block (like a menu unordered list contained in a sidebar div);

2. learn about block and inline elements (Web Design from Scratch is a great learning resource and I'd recommend it), and that CSS can change this behaviour;

3. test in Firefox, then test in Internet Explorer. >= IE7's not so bad (but look out for HasLayout). What you can't tweak to get right in IE, use conditional comments to add CSS that only IE can see - never use CSS hacks - .htc files that add missing IE functionality (e.g. rollover styles on any element) are available;

4. learn about CSS positioning, and use 'fixed' sparingly;

5. put all your CSS in one file (for starters), and don't use inline CSS in the HTML;

6. styling forms and form fields is almost a separate skill :-)

Use background images to add style, but also understand that you can offset and overlap images using positioning. You'll need to use PNGs for nice transparency, though. Oh yes, and opacity looks nice, but requires non-standard CSS for now. although the more flexible rgba (a=alpha) method is widely-supported. As do rounded corners, but both worth using.

I'd avoid CSS frameworks and resets for now - they'll complicate things at this stage by adding yet another DSL to learn (but read the arguments and the pros and cons). To avoid annoying default margins and padding, I always reset everything by doing html *, body * {margin: 0; padding 0;} then build padding and margins back in wherever needed - never been a problem so far :-)

When is it OK to use Javascript and when not?

I have to respectfully disagree with the posters that say that you shouldn't use JavaScript, or use it sparingly, or have it degrade gracefully.

The reason is that the vast majority of people nowadays has JavaScript enabled and appreciates the desktop-like experience it can provide from a website. Really, who doesn't have JavaScript enabled? People act as if this is a statistically significant group. It is not.

Not using JavaScript is a little bit like nitpicking about variable sizes (oh, I can use a 16-bit integer here instead of 32-bit to save some memory). Unless you are doing some monster project for hundreds of thousands of people, where the ROI of the time you spend on making your website degrade gracefully is actually positive, you should use JavaScript as freely as you like. The two people that can't access it because they disabled it are paranoid and probably not the kind of people you want as customers anyways.

Just my 2 cents.

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