Raible Designs

Posted by Matt Raible on March 04, 2006 at 07:27 AM MST #

Posted by Matt Raible on March 04, 2006 at 06:06 PM MST #

Posted by Matt Raible on March 04, 2006 at 11:20 PM MST #

Posted by GB on March 05, 2006 at 07:24 AM MST #

Posted by Matt Raible on March 07, 2006 at 06:18 PM MST #

Posted by Andrew Cornett on March 17, 2006 at 08:14 PM MST #

Posted by Matt Raible on March 28, 2006 at 10:04 PM MST #

I put together a site to help demonstrate/test various themes and content. I think it's important that all entries look and function properly for all of the layouts and for any reasonable content that marked up according to the framework's guidelines. I know that this is pretty much the idea behind css.appfuse.org, I did this mostly for my own use and learning. This is still a work in progress, but you can check it out at:
http://www.helmstetter.com/css-framework/

When you select a new style, you'll have to reload the page and/or the frame. I tried some javascript to fix this but couldn't get it working.

1. I changed the branding div to include the appropriate branding logo via css, rather than putting this in the content. This is a cleaner approach (IMO) allowing for each entry to be individually styled/branding without changing the content.
2. I also implemented a minor trick to set the currently selected nav menu item using css. I put a small chunk of css for this in each theme's default.css, something like this:

   #home #nav-home a,
   #articles #nav-articles a,
   #archive #nav-archive a,
   #photos #nav-photos a,
   #about #nav-about a,
   #contact #nav-contact a {
       color: white;
       background-color: black;
   }
   

Posted by Mark Helmstetter on April 09, 2006 at 08:43 PM MDT #

I just tried the last entry (haven't uploaded it to the the public server yet). This brings up an issue regarding standards for submissions. I haven't looked really closely at FuseApp001, but it seems that this entry includes mods to files other than layout.css. My interpretation of the original CSS Framework sources is that the intent was that only this file be modified and that the framework files not be modified by a particular "theme". I'm not a CSS expert, so perhaps there are technical issues with this approach? I guess that Zen Garden doesn't place any restrictions on themes like this, they just apply the submission's CSS to a fixed set of markup.

Maybe I'm thinking about this too much like a deveoper, rather than a designer. I guess I'm just thinking that if everyone makes their own modifications to the entire set of CSS, then really the only component of the "framework" is that HTML markup standards.

I'm certainly not opposed to integrating the testbed into AppFuse or an extension/sub-project of AppFuse. I just did this in PHP becuase I wanted something as simple as possible and something that would be easy to deploy/test. I've played around with AppFuse a little, if I get a chance I'll checkout appfuse-css and see what it's all about. I acutally also experimented with a pure JavaScript version of this concept, but wasn't able to get it working in the short time I had to work on it. That would have been really cool, as users could download a zip without need any kind of runtime/platform requirements.

Posted by Mark Helmstetter on April 13, 2006 at 01:09 AM MDT #

Andrew, I hope that my comments did not come across as a criticism of your submission, that was not my intent. I think that we're all trying to figure this out, prove the framework, identify any "bugs" or areas of potential improvement and demonstrate and illustrate it's usage.

I agree, I did find having so many different stylesheets make learning how to apply CSS Framework a little more difficult at first. After reading Mike Stenhouse's blog entry on Modular CSS, it makes a bit more sense to me. I think that we could perhaps come up with some CSS Framework Usage Guidelines and maybe a Quickstart Guide or something like that. The hard part will probably be getting everyone to agree on that should's and shouldnt's.

I think that a wiki would be the perfect place to host these documents, but I think that some sort of forum would also be helpful too. Right now, everyone's comments, questions, suggestions, problems, etc. are all spread over a bunch of blog entries making it difficult to have a more centralized place where people can ask questions and discuss. I'm thinking that this would be a place where people could ask "How do I..." or "When I do X,Y - Z happens". Optionally, there may also be a separate bug tracking system where problems identified in the forums are officially reported and tracked.

I'm just thinking outloud here, maybe some of this is overkill for just the core CSS Framework? Of course all of this will require effort, and a reasonable amout of interest, support, and effort from the community. So far, I'm not sure that I've seen enough interest in the framework and this contest to demonstrate that this is all viable. But who knows maybe once we get some nice looking themes and the word starts to spread, there will be more community interest.

Posted by Mark Helmstetter on April 14, 2006 at 06:12 AM MDT #

svn co https://appfuse-css.dev.java.net/svn/appfuse-css/trunk/cssframework

Or download it from http://css.appfuse.org/cssframework.zip.

Posted by Matt Raible on April 21, 2006 at 06:59 AM MDT #

Posted by Matt Raible on April 25, 2006 at 10:17 PM MDT #

Posted by Matt Raible on April 25, 2006 at 11:20 PM MDT #

Posted by reddeagle on May 02, 2006 at 01:39 PM MDT #