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The simplicity and scalability of PW for front end dev?


kathep
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@kathep

Usability is of course a part of design, but for me it's much related to functionality than to look and feel, which is what I meant to convey. I've yet to find a framework which doesn't restrict me in styling while still doing a great job of providing solid building blocks for the web. OOCSS or inuitcss kinda go in a way which I can see really useful. But something like bootstrap never appealed to me.

Never heard of OOCSS but I use Stylus and LESS (CSS Pre-processors) not really a designer just a developer who can manage to design. I think Bootstrap 3 is awesome. 

@Kathep  I didn't mean you shouldn't use it I meant, if you already know HTML then its no problem as it would increase productivity.

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@LostKobrakai Ever heard of Aesthetic Usability Effect, Scanning, or Visual Hierarchy?

'Look and feel' is central to usability. They cannot be separated in practice (although people do it in theory all the time).

I know these, but I don't think one can pack such things in something called framework. For me these are based on project-per-project decicions. Take for example visual hierarchy. On this site (http://www.mediamarkt.de/), there's a big solid red slider on the top. And it has to be bright red, as the whole page is full of things courting for attention. In stark contrast something like my portfolio (http://kobrakai.de/). A basic headline just double the base font size draws the attention. I honestly can't see how frameworks could help me with this much more than a h1–h6 hierarchy.

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@Sephiroth

Both css "frameworks" I mentioned have nothing to do with preprocessors other than plain using it. It's more about finding out how to abstract patterns in websites which can be reused as good as possible. The most well-known example would be the media object, which is shown here: http://www.stubbornella.org/content/2010/06/25/the-media-object-saves-hundreds-of-lines-of-code/

I don't want to copy the whole story into this forum post.

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 I honestly can't see how frameworks could help me with this much more than a h1–h6 hierarchy.

I understand your point, and I understand that you don't see a point to visual rules in frameworks. That doesn't mean that there isn't a point though.

There are standard principles of color use, color combinations, contrast, typography, font matching, spacing, and composition that, when incorporated into frameworks, can save the discerning designer a lot of time and effort. It's ok that individuals may not value these things, but there are a lot of people who do.

I do agree with you that frameworks are not plug-and-play in terms of 'look and feel' - but then they are not meant to be. It's fine with me if there is a visual style in place that I change for every site.

@Kathep  I didn't mean you shouldn't use it I meant, if you already know HTML then its no problem as it would increase productivity.

*slaps forehead* Oh, I see! Yes, agreed. These tools are really better for people with good front end coding knowledge to start with.

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I like to know what code is going into a site for optimisation, and even find myself writing my own image sliders, tool tips etc.. I make it for my specific case or site without introducing a HUGE framework and having the two hold problem of bloat and writing code "their" way (as im never interested in learning a framework when I can learn to do it myself).

I've used Dreamweaver, Macaw and someothers in the past and feel, though handy for mockups, I would never use on a live site due to the lack of confidence in the code they produce.

Also I'm always interested in learning new things and trying new styles so a framework doesnt make sense for me in that way too.

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Thanks Kathy for starting this thread. I'm really interested in new way to speed up the workflow in an intuitive way.

I didn't knew "Blocs" but I have tested in the past Pinegrow that seems more mature today.

I'm more design oriented and I find frameworks and these tools to be invaluable.

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Manlio, you know that if you don't change your avatar until the 60th post, the forum software will change it irreversibly to a random spice girl. You're dangerously close to it...

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I must admit that I have moved away from using fully fledged frameworks and instead have created myself a sass based toolkit.

I recently gave SASS/SCSS a whirl. You've gotta share some of your toolkit. It would be neat to see how other newbs are tackling their file/folder structures.

Of course, you can also invest some time in creating snippets, setting up macros or using toolkits like emmet.io in your code editor. You can build sites pretty quickly that way. Joss mentioned a few of these above — if you haven't already, checkout bourbon, neat, bitters, refills. Those thoughtbot folks make good stuff.

--------------------------------------------

I've really been liking Neat.

I tried Susy just a few days ago, but found it confusing. Neat has been ... well, neat! :)

I've added some refill elements to my site, now I'm going through little by little, learning some SCSS and customizing the output. I just learned how to minify my css, so that's cool

:)

sass --watch styles.scss:styles.min.css --style compressed

Never heard of OOCSS but I use Stylus and LESS (CSS Pre-processors) not really a designer just a developer who can manage to design. I think Bootstrap 3 is awesome. 

@Kathep  I didn't mean you shouldn't use it I meant, if you already know HTML then its no problem as it would increase productivity.

Then you'll really like SMACSS https://smacss.com/

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