Powered by Blueprint CSS (at least at the time of this writing)

This begins a category called “geekery” which I’m sure will boast quite a few more posts, especially because there are so few people in my life with whom I can “geek out” and get excited about web technologies or new frameworks or CSS hacks, etc.

That said, I’m geeking out on the blog here, too, at the moment.

Though still fairly blank, this blog is now sporting the Blueprint CSS Framework. It’s something I’ve been eyeing for awhile, and have finally decided (along with the resuscitation of this here blog) to at least try it out.

Oh, and for those of you who quit reading after “CSS blah blah blah”…sorry, there…can’t really help myself…

I have to say, for as flexible a CSS framework as it is, it’s remarkably lightweight. I honestly thought I’d see thousands of rows of code to handle most html tags with addendum after addendum to handle specifics.

They’ve really taken a zen approach to the code, and though I haven’t added much to it yet, I imagine I’ll serve up my custom styles through an additional stylesheet that’ll just cascade below the Blueprint code and add to what’s already there.

My idea is to add a custom body background to the site every once in a while, and then for the custom fonts, headers, etc. I can serve up a separate stylesheet (just for screen — I won’t enable IE6 users and print shouldn’t be messed with anyway) that has layer-specific rules for text etc.

For instance, if I want the header to be a background image or something instead of the simple font in Blueprint, I can just serve up something like:

.span-24 h1{text-indent:-999em; background:url(some/image/here.jpg) no-repeat;}

This way, I can allow Blueprint to remain as is, but then tweak it to my liking as well, without having to edit the code. It could get dicey with the span areas that have more content, but I think I can get it to flow well.

I’m suddenly realizing that EVERYONE probably already does it this way, and that I’m not really giving somebody anything new…so if this is a “no duh” moment for you, reader, let me claim complete and total lack of originality and hope that the internet offers you something infinitely more interesting to read…

and that you tell a joke that NOBODY finds funny in the near future, and that it’s HUMILIATING.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 13th, 2008 at 7:13 am and is filed under Geekery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

2 Responses to “Powered by Blueprint CSS (at least at the time of this writing)”
  1. Carlton Dickson Says:
    August 6th, 2008 at 12:18 pm

    Blueprint is great, it really speeds up development time once you get to grips with it. I would definitely recommend it for people that spend a lot of time fighting with CSS.

    Was just looking for a “powered by blueprint” button for a web site I am working on, don’t suppose you know of one do you?

  2. admin Says:
    August 6th, 2008 at 12:26 pm

    I think it’s great, too, Carlton, and would be especially helpful on sites where you’ll use a LOT of varying layouts inside. Before I knew about it, I came up with my own (not terribly efficient) version for http://www.brownsguide.com , which was going to really need to be flexible. It works for that site, but I think Blueprint is much more scalable.

    I looked and couldn’t find a “powered by blueprint” button anywhere, not even on the sites of its creators. Guess you can come up with your own if you so desire!

    Thanks for the comment!

Leave a Reply