September 17th, 2007 Posted by Don Albrecht
Here’s a tip for all you Blueprint CSS users. If you want to extend a background into the margin beyond a column, apply the first & last classes to the column. Even if it’s not the first column in a row, it will extend the div 10 px into the gutter between columns.
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September 6th, 2007 Posted by Don Albrecht
Think of it as Visual Risk Management.
As AJAX developers, we regularly place control over swaths of the DOM in the hands of our users and outside of our web designers control. Sure, we can restrict the users capabilities, clean up word html, run things through validators, & provide all the styles needed, but these fixes require us to anticipate problems before they happen.
Using CSS frameworks, takes a lot of the risk out of the situation. A CSS framework removes the risk of a user accidentally calling on a structure that hasn’t been anticipated or that isn’t properly styled by our existing stylesheets. CSS frameworks take the guessing work out of the situation. By reseting and frequently standardizing all possible html elements. A CSS framework ensures that your markup behaves appropriately across browsers and user inputs. It doesn’t matter what framework you use either. In fact, a corporation’s professionally built CSS templates likely include all of the resets & standardizations needed.
If you don’t trust your stylesheets or are building one from scratch. I recommend you investigate the following frameworks.
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September 4th, 2007 Posted by Don Albrecht
This is part one of a multipart tutorial on AJAX application construction. Today we will be building a Software Project Scheduling application based on Joel Spolsky’s Painless Software Schedules system.
The application will be built using the Php Object Generator, and ExtJS Framework.
Keep reading →
August 13th, 2007 Posted by Don Albrecht
There are two extremely powerful CSS frameworks available to web developers at this time: blueprint & yui css. Both provide a basic css reset, simplified font formating & powerful layout tools. It is the layout tools that will most influence your decision as to which framework makes sense for your project.
Blueprint is based on a strict layout grid. All objects are defined in terms of 14 columns that define a 950px wide layout. Complex layouts can be defined by carefully constructing columns & collections of columns. There is no limit to recursive depth, however no column can be less than 70 pixels wide and all columns are a multiple of 70 pixels. This ensures that everything on the page lines up cleanly.
YUI uses a more flexible template & divider route. All YUI layouts begin as a document with a predefined width ( 750px, 950px, 974px, 100% or a custom width). A single sidebar can then be added to the left or right in a predefined width ( 160px, 180px, 240px, 300 px). Lastly, the body can be recursively divided using grid tools into thirds, quarters & halves.
So, which one should you use?
Use YUI if you need a layout in a dimension other than 950px or if your layout requires division by thirds or quarters across the entire width.
Don’t use YUI if you need to create objects that are a width other than 2/3, 1/3, 1/2, 1/4 or 3/4 of their container e.g. (5/6, 7/8) or if you need more precise control of dimensions.
Use Blueprint if you need fine grained control & precise positioning in a standard 950px layout. Generally, Blueprint based layouts are much more manageable over the long run & easier to code. Unfortunately they have higher bandwidth consumption & fewer options than a YUI layout.
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