Building a Simple CSS Framework
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The ability to reuse blocks of code is a blessing and a time saver to programmers everywhere. Web sites are too distinctive to allow you to do very much of this, right? Wrong. You can build a CSS framework to give you the flexibility you need, and use the time you save for the parts of your project that matter most. This five-part series shows you how.
Introduction
Let’s face it. Experienced web developers know that a certain dose of laziness is actually healthy, particularly when it comes to building large web applications on a tight headline. Naturally, I’m not saying that this is something that you should be bragging about in a job interview, but when it’s necessary to develop a huge web-based project, reusing certain blocks of code can save you from reinventing the wheel.
However, in the terrain of web design things can be a bit more complex. It's not always easy to reuse a certain number of HTML templates, or even entire style sheets. Even so, it’s feasible to create several CSS files that can be reused for accelerating the development of distinct web sites.
In other words, what I’m talking about here is creating a CSS framework that permits, with minor variations, you to style multiple web projects, without having to write long and complex style sheets from scratch. Besides, it’s possible that you’ve already built such a framework without being aware of it, or that you’re interested in learning how to create it in a painless way.
If this is the case, then hopefully this group of articles will be useful to you, since in the course of its different tutorials, I’ll be demonstrating how to construct a simple, yet useful, CSS framework that will allow you to create and style several web page layouts, including fixed and liquid designs, by reusing only a few external style sheets.
Of course, I’m going to start this educational journey with the very basic concepts, that is explaining how to build a basic CSS reset file, along with a couple of HTML templates. As you begin to grasp the logic behind all these processes, I’ll demonstrate how to create more complicated web page layouts.
Hopefully, by the end of this series, you’ll be armed with the background required for building your own CSS framework, or for expanding the one that I plan to build in the next few lines.
In either case, it’s time to start reading. Let’s get going!
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