Recently I was reading an article in sitepoint about the css frameworks . Though I have heard about the css frameworks earlier I was not able to get completely . But after seeing the article I thought of looking once again deeply into it .

Some of the most commonly used css frameworks are

1 ) Blue print CSS : http://www.blueprintcss.org/

2 ) 960 Grid system : http://960.gs/

3 ) YUI Grid : http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/grids/

4 ) Elastic : http://elasticss.com/

5 ) YAML : http://www.yaml.de/en/ and many more .

You may be thinking why I thought of writing about CSS framework though I am a PHP developer ? Am I right ? Recently I got a chance to slice a website . As I am doing for the first time , it takes some time to complete it . The problems every one face is browser compatibility . Here comes the use of these frameworks .

These comes with inbuilt classes for the need and is fully tested . But the only problem is with the name of the class ( Eg : grid_1 prefix_6 suffix_5 ) . What makes me interested to look again to the css frameworks after reading the sitepoint article is we can make custom classes now .

Yes every designers will be using the class names like header , footer , content , sidebar etc rather than the css grid_1 , grid_2 .... grid_15 . Though name is not a big deal for a good designer it makes some easiness for guys who donot have much css background .

We can download the psd of the grid systems and slice the website with the size provided in it . A screenshot taken from 960 grid is given below . Look carefully the menu and other parts and see how its done . We should use the grid system when we start designing it . So will help much not to arrange any more text and images to left and right when we start slicing it .

Thus we can increase our productivity for the sites ( As its tested in many browsers you may never spend much time. ) . It may take a few additional hours when we are new . But it will be really helpful in the future when slicing web site . Wish you good luck and try slicing a psd from scratch using your favourite css frameworks.

Updated : Now 960 grid system has one more layout , 24 column . Previously was only having 12 and 16 . I want to redesign this site using 960 grid . Hope I can come with a nice design for this drupal site . Want to brush up the theming concepts . Many things in the to do list .