Automatic Theme Evolution, CSS and Abstraction
January 8th, 2008
I think the fact that CSS frameworks exist is proof that they are too complicated. Yet Another Multicolumn Layout | An (X)HTML/CSS Framework. I love the idea though, that IF WE CAN JUST AGREE ON WHAT THE XHTML ELEMENTS ARE FOR GOD’S SAKE… that the rest falls into place. A Plone skin would work on a Wordpress site etc (or need very little hacking).
If tools like Wordpress automatically packaged up the skins to be distributed via zip files… and provided tools to alter certain variables (like colours, header images etc) then people wouldn’t have to “share” a skin, it would happen automatically and good design would effortlessly ripple across the web making the world a more beautiful place.
Of course this is open to lots of nay-saying about creative rights (you may not want your design work automatically made available… you sissy) and attribution (this could be fixed easily) but it will happen. Within the year skins that work on Blogger will work on MySpace, Wordpress, Drupal and Joomla with no re-purposing whatsoever. They will work on IE, a mobile phone, be accessible and have a print version too.
Now are you ready for CSS Framework wars… which one do you favour? What if Firefox were to support one particular framework more than the others?CSS was an attempt to abstract the visual appearance of a page (that didn’t work). Abstracting the XHTML and making CSS usable with Frameworks may be the answer…