I guess the saving grace is the relative maturity of many templating systems which can handle the heavy lifting of the layout styling in an easily and even handle delivery of unique layouts for the various mobile platforms. (Ok that’s pushing it for most of them but probably the best solution in the near & mid term).

I too wish for your “…ability to specify a given div (left column) as having an entirely different span on different grids given two presentation mediums…”

The problem is that like the limited user agent support mobile devices have for the handheld value in the link element, using php or some other method to do UA detection is full of flaws. This goes well beyond CSS frameworks and is the result of the virtual “Wild West” of handheld browsers with support of UA screening like the iPhone or embedded Opera but some others using WAP and the like mean that it can’t be all handled by the sheet. Some amount of control with the delivery needs to be done on the server and there will always be the need for the devices to have UA overrides to ensure that the web is not completely broken on special devices with unique or atypical displays.

It would be wonderful conditionals could apply in CSS but that would then mean it becomes another scripting language that would then need to be parsed and rendered and I don’t think that will ever happen.

I have seen people successfully use PHP and ASP to interact with CSS by using replace teqhniques and I think that a smart combination of server routing and server-side scripting might be able to achieve the results you seek but it is a long way from easy and certainly makes one realize that it is not just Content and its Presentation but Delivery as well that becomes a major part of the equation.

Kinda makes you want to make raw/static HTML sometimes.

All the best,

Jay

What I’m really hoping for would be some way to achieve an extra layer of abstraction. Basically the ability to specify a given div (left column) as having an entirely different span on different grids given two presentation mediums (screen / mobile) for example.

Many will agree that using a framework such as BlueprintCSS with its span-12 classes is not separation between presentation and content and to use such a framework requires compromise with that ideal BUT it is not unsemantic as semantics doesn’t dictate the exclusion of other descriptors along with those that describe the content within a containing element. I argue that given the nature of group development and workflows that it adds some meaning albeit only to the designers and developers but meaning.

On your very valid point about issues of display issues with various platforms such as mobile device or some other output that the presentational classes won’t work or could work against you and in that case one would have to consider that in the initial structure of the document or document template. That being said you could use the Blueprint Grid Generator to create a grid.css file with identical classes but with different widths for them. There are various other approaches that one could take ranging from additional stylesheets, server side manipulation or media type declaration in the stylesheet links.

It may be the case that you can’t use a [ready made] framework for anything more that as a scaffold for your particular design and may just need to do it the old fashioned way and write a style sheet.