SBala

Although CSS frameworks and grid systems are relatively new, Blueprint tends to receive most of the attention when speaking of building a grid-based layout. Blueprint is great, but sometimes the extra features in it are unnecessary for most people who just want a fundamental and easy to implement grid. The 960 Grid System is just that.

1. It's LightweightLet's face it, adding too much extra bloat just for a CSS framework is the last thing a web developer wants. Adding only 3kb with a fully functional grid is a good compromise of functionality and efficiency.2. The Magic NumberThe 960 Grid System uses the backbone width of 960 pixels, which is the magic number for all modern monitors. 960 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 15, 16, 20, 24, 30, 32, 40, 48, 60, 64, 80, 96, 120, 160, 192, 240, 320 and 480. The large number of divisors that it has makes it an ideal candidate for website widths. It isn't a good choice for fluid layouts, but does a great job of grid layouts.3. Reset Your ValuesThe 960 Grid System includes a small file that includes a statement that automatically resets all of the default browser styles that commonly plague a good grid layout. This ensures that your grid looks the same - regardless of which engine is rendering it.4. 12/16You can make a grid composed of twelve or sixteen columns. This allows you to tweak the widths of the various elements on a page, but still maintain a unified alignment with the columns.5. Auto Margins960 automatically adds margins to its grid-based elements, so they never overlap. 'Nuff said.6. Typography960 automatically sizes text for you, which makes things look pretty good with sans-serif fonts. If you don't like any of the settings, you can easily edit and change them without harming your grid.7. Sketchy960 provides printable sketch paper that allows you to draw and plan using the column-grid system before you begin coding.8. Openness960 is 100% open source. It is licensed under the GNU GPL and the MIT license. This basically allows you to do anything you want with the code. The MIt license permits any use, reproduction, sale, and modification of the 960 Grid System as long as the code remains under the very same license.9. It's Float-TasticIt is very easy to arrange block-level elements by adding float attributes to them. Since 960 takes care of all the sizes and margins, your block-level elements arrange themselves without any width-related hassles. Also, remember to take advantage of using multiple CSS classes by separating class names with a space.

10. It's Easy

Simply add the class "grid_[number]" to your block-level elements to specify the amount of columns that composes their widths, and and the class "container_12" or "container_16" to specify how many columns are going to be in your main container/block-level element. See the demo and view its source for an idea of how it works.

Anyone making websites has to start from somewhere and most of the time that "somewhere" is another website. By taking inspiration, your keystrokes should never come close to Ctrl+C; however, use what you see to create something that you like. Minimalist designs are a new trend - following the Web 2.0 craze - that emphasizes a separation from the cluttered and visually gaudy cliches associated with the typical idea of modern design. The following are 15 great sources of inspiration for creating a cleaner appearance for your site. Each of these websites serves a different purpose to its creator, and the designs you may derive from them will probably express a similar purpose as well.

1. Sitening

What it does well:The Sitening website does a good job of utilizing large text and JavaScript tweaks to emphasize certain points of the site to the user, while the smaller text is the detail. The CSS also seperates the various chunks of content into a grid-based layout with two columns and multiple rows in each column. Borders are used to distinguish the various pieces of the grid, and a user can flow straight through the page similar to a comic boook.

2. Swissmiss

What it does well:Swissmiss does a good job of being content-centric. Although the design itself isn't visually spectacular, the emphasis on the content with plenty of deviations on the sidebar is a technique that more websites need to utilize.

3. National Gazette

What it does well:The page is very small. In fact, there is practically no scrolling required on the front page of this website. Unlike Swissmiss, instead of focusing all on the content in standard reverse-chronological order, the content is segregated into sections that allow the user to chose on the top navigation.

4. Emil Milanov

What it does well:Less text. The use of images to show in a portfolio is nothing new, but the grid layout is used exclusively for those images instead of the normal usage of a grid layout - text.

5. Finch

What it does well:Who said minimalism was a lack of color? Finch fuses the ideas of image-heavy design with the concepts of simplicity to create a website that is both content-centric and visually pleasing. What more is there to ask?

6. AIGA New York

What it does well:It emulates a physical newspaper both typographically and in its grid-layout. Unlike the National Gazette, the content is sorted through the use of the layout instead of individual pages.

7. Rikcat Industries

What it does well:This is the standard blog layout with less bloat. The sidebar isn't cluttered and the body is compact. This style works well for such a site.

8. Mark Boulton

What it does well:This site presents the user with a short summary and four long columns as they scroll down. This technique segregates information as a segue to other pages.

9. Rainfall Daffinson

What it does well:It keeps is simple. Nothing in excess.

10. Braintied Wordpress Theme

What it does well:A Wordpress theme that employs similar tactics to Rainfall Daffinson.

11. Work By Hanna

What it does well:This isn't necessarily a brilliant design (it has no visually pleasing elements), but it is a really gutsy move by the creator of this website.

12. Coptix

What it does well:Minimalist doesn't mean boring, and Coptix proves just that. It fuses some interactive elements with color and imagery to create a great compact design.

13. Shaun Inman

What it does well:This shares a page with Rainfall Daffinson in the fundamental sense, but it adds a sidebar with text and a bottom row of links.

14. Peter Pixel

What it does well:Peter Pixel has multiple columns and a simple navigation that could use some revamping.

15. Mini Blog Wordpress Theme

What it does well:

In its small width, this Wordpress theme emphasizes content and sidebar on an even scale. Also, making the width smaller makes a sentence look more like a paragraph.

I wrote a post not too long ago about Firebug, Dragonfly, and the developer tools the web development community has grown to love and appreciate. Firebug, Dragonfly, Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar, and that thing on Safari all share one thing in common: they are  extension of their corresponding browsers and when testing on a different browser it is often times hard to find the plugin needed, or tedious to get accustomed to a new interface. When things get dry in cross-browser bug fixing and DOM/CSS inspection, the new smaller kid in town is planning on saving the day - Firebug Lite. Unlike it's older brother, Firebug Lite is a chunk of JavaScript intended to be added to a web page that is being developed and provides an interface for debugging without the need of any extensions.

It's rather simple to use Firebug Lite. All you need to do is add in the script at http://getfirebug.com/releases/lite/1.2/firebug-lite-compressed.js.

There is also an offline method to use Firebug Lite as well as a bookmarklet for use during web development.

There are tons of other little features built into the tool, so go ahead and enjoy another method of debugging.

When doing any form of web development, the end goal is always a smooth interface for a user. When making both the server-side code that generates a page or the frontend interface template, problems are sure to follow. Maybe an accidental typo in the JavaScript bricked the interface, or the small snippet of CSS went horribly wrong; whichever the case, a tool that can show the hierarcheal progression of HTML elements and their associated pieces of CSS and DOM code enable a faster approach to debugging since you will know which chunk of code is creating the problem.

When debugging, there are multiple tools that allow you to take a look under the hood of any web page. My personal favorites are the ones that integrate with browsers. Depending on which browser you use, your choice will vary. If you are using Internet Explorer, I suggest getting Firefox.

For the brave souls developing and debugging for Internet Explorer, Microsoft offers a toolbar with some tools that come as close to the Firefox or Opera debugging experience as you can find on Internet Explorer. The screenshots say everything that needs to be said.

Opera's Dragonfly, which is currently in an alpha stage of development, is a fairly robust tool that provides debugging tools for JavaScript, CSS and DOM inspection, and error detection. Although the Opera browser itself is not released under an Open Source license, the Dragonfly debugging tools are available under the BSD license. It is still a product in Alpha, and there are many features under development.

The second alpha release is the next step towards Opera Dragonfly 1.0. Look forward to new features such as DOM editing, improved JavaScript thread handling, XHR and HTTP monitoring, improved keyboard navigation, and translation into a number of languages in subsequent releases.

*Note: Dragonfly provides tools such as integrated validation in a single extension whilst Firefox requires two extensions for a similar functionality. A single extension provides a further integrated interface and cohesive sets of tools. This is hardly a drawback for choosing Firebug, but merely a slight benefit for Opera users.

Lastly, and most certainly not least, the excellent combination of Firebug and the Web Developer toolbar demonstrate the power of Firefox - its extensions. There really isn't much to say. Firebug provides the similar tool-set of CSS and DOM inspection paired with error detection. The web developer toolbar has many nifty tools such as a ruler for measuring pixels on a page and built in validation for external and local files.

At first glance at this update from 37Signals, I shrugged and said my usual cynical, "Who cares?" until I realized the drastic progression ensuing the process of companies slowly ditching support for the outdated and bug-ridden Internet Exploerer 6. 37Signals is phasing out Internet Explorer 6 support on every single product they distribute, and is starting a trend that is much appreciated by almost every web developer. If this catches onto more mainstream markets, in which major online players eventually decide to cut Internet Explorer 6 off, more websites will focus on creating semantic and standards-compliant code rather than violating standards and ruining clean code in order to properly display in an outdated browser. The catch, 26.5% of web surfers are using Internet Explorer 6. Although that number may be a minority, it is still a large audience.

Microsoft has updated Internet Explorer to version 7. Many people view this browser with mixed emotions; it heavily improves upon its prior releases, but it still is a far way from true standards compliance.

Firefox, however, is slowly changing the complications commonly associated with technologies surrounding web site presentation. With its 41% market share, Firefox has heavily optimized both resource usage and rendering. The improvements made by Apple and Opera are also putting pressure on the not-so-dominant Internet Explorer for change.

The pressure put on Microsoft by the browser developments made by Opera, Apple, and Mozilla are still not enough to reduce the 26.5% if people still make the web work well on Internet Explorer. What most developers who consider the needs of Internet Explorer users are missing is the fact they they are encouraging the use of an outdated browser that cannot properly handle modern tasks. Programmers are supplementing proper coding with hacks, and hindering the future implementations of CSS3, JavaScript 1.6+, and XHTML 2.0.

Once users see a majority of the web as a disfunctional mess, only to realize it was their own fault for ignoring the pestering Windows Update notifications, they will adopt browsers that give them a better experience whilst also allowing developers to use the web-based technologies they want to implement.