YABB - Yet Another Blueprint Blog
Over the past few days I have slowly rolled out a completely new code-base for this site (ah vacation). The design changes were minimal: a slightly wider format, less images (http requests), reorganized navigation, a much improved archive, and other small improvements here and there. So why a new code base so soon? I decided to try Blueprint, the new CSS Framework by Olav Bjørkøy and company and what better place than my personal site?
Working with Blueprint gave me weird flashbacks to designing with tables. That’s not entirely an insult. There are moments when I remember fondly the image-splicing, td wrangling days of yore. For all their faults tables did enforce a sort of “framework” on my designs and over time I could code a design in my head.
Don’t get me wrong most of the time the mere thought of collapsing borders and wrapping nearly every line of text in a font tag gives me fits. The dawn of CSS brought with it unparalleled control and flexibility. At times, however, I have wondered if that very same flexibility CSS brought to my designs has also meant a decline in productivity.
Blueprint is an interesting compromise between the power of CSS and the “structure” of tables. My code is not as semantic as it was just one revision ago but overall there is less of it. For some reason (maybe it’s my fault - I’m not sure yet) Blueprint does not line up the vertical rhythm on my pages as tightly as my 100% bespoke code did. On the other hand it’s much easier to embed images, diagrams, and the like in my entries now.
Overall Blueprint was very easy to use and once I had the basic concepts down and I was coding much faster with it than I did without it. Of the little additional CSS I needed to add, the vast majority of it was simply to set colors for my elements. Of course my original design was relatively simple and grid-based to begin with. It will be interesting to see how it holds up in more complex designs.
I didn’t bother with the full round of browser testing before launch (it is just a personal site and a vacation project to boot - who want’s to open IE on vacation?) so that requires a bit more investigation. As of this writing I also haven’t implemented the visual section of my site yet. That section is currently powered by Plogger and I’m highly considering a change but that’s the subject of another post.