CSS Blueprint

Hi Joseph - we've already done a Blueprint course here

I must say that I believe most people consider Blueprint to be out of date.

From what I have seen, most people are currently using either Twitter Bootstrap or Foundation

Hope it helps! :)

I agree with Nir. Blueprint is a bit outdated these days and has its limitations compared to Foundation 3, Bootstrap and a few others – the last update was May 14, 2011. Although it's good for typography and layout, it lacks features such as RWD and use of preprocessors like Sass or LESS.

Personally I think that the Zurb foundation & Bootstrap add in too much to start with. You need to learn to walk before you run.

So learning the foundations of: fluid grids, fluid images, good typography, media queries. Then maybe add in a pre-processor like less.

Once you've got those down you will be better able to work on a large site that is already using a framework. However I'm a firm believer in not solving problems you don't have yet.

http://www.rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2012/03/21/stop-solving-problems-you-dont-yet-have/

Thank you, James. I'm not sure why people feel the need to start adding libraries of stuff they might not even need...before the project is even assessed? I roll my own Grids, set the baselines and margins early in production. Done. Buttons and UI? I guess Bootstrap is good for that as long as you don't mind taking on all the bloat of the rest of the framework.

I like having control over my own classes, not have to deal with a bunch of IDs that need to be overridden later. I don't like having to deal with specificity issues every step of the way. Oh, the only downside is that you'll never get on Dribbbbbbbbble unless you focus on UI and making buttons.

James and John are absolutely correct. For me, the best solution is a simple, hand-crafted solution. The content & project scope should dictate the tools we use.

We need to be careful with frameworks, especially while learning the fundamentals. If someone else has done most of the work for us, then how will we learn?

The best quote I've heard about the slippery slope of using a frameworks:

"So make sure every bit of code added to your project is there for a reason you can explain, not just because it is part of some standard toolkit or boilerplate."

I use Bootstrap for prototyping. For example, if i'm unsure how a design will respond I normally create a quick wireframe with bootstrap. I find frameworks to be over the top for production so I generally prefer to start from a set of patterns I have created myself.