Will Oller .com

Popular frameworks: 960, blueprint, CWS, Elements, YUI, etc.
960 came along after the fact but was interesting enough to include in Eric’s research.

What are the common themes? What are the differences? Arey they good or bad things?

Which one should you be using? None of them!
There is nothing wrong with templates (for inspiration, etc) but we don’t make cookie-cutter sites.

Overview
A truth table basically of features.
Commonalities: Resets, Colors, Fonts.
This is evidence of what we all feel: extreme frustration with browser differences.

Font sizes:
1em != 1 on line height. 1em computes to 12.16 px and that is propogated down the DOM. Generally, don’t use units on line heights.

Heading sizes:
Very inconsistent.
YUI doesn’t touch header sizes.
Heading sizes don’t go below 1em (unless you count the HTML4 proposed)
Perfect heading sizes as per the wisdom of the crowd (averaging 2 averages)
These are similar to what designers already use.

Naming conventions:
Masthead vs header, container vs content vs goingtohell, etc.
Some used global grid classes (960, blueprint, yui/tsg) like: .span-16 (which you of course apply to a div),
The others use ids that are descriptive: #footer, #nav, #topnav, #content
#content, #main, and #page are separate concepts

Layout Invocation:
Some had all the possibilities in 1 file (960, blueprint, YUI), others used separate layout files for 1-2-3col layouts

Some used Wired pattern: 1 css with @imports to lots of others, the other frameworks include multiple s in html
IEWIN only caches the 1st level of @imports. <-- GET CLARIFICATION ON THIS

Hacks:
clear-fixing (css limitation)
pseudo-padding (css box-model limitation) (using .box with margin inside a column, esp with mixing units)
IEEEEE! (* html ie is teh suck)

Cool bits:
Attribute styling urls on external links (like ALA article) (Don’t use for crucial content)
Debugging styles (blueprint grid is neato)
YAML ‘draft’ files: a skeleton for variying styles (could be cool for multi-team environs)
960 has ’sketch’ files, pdf templates that have a grid like the framework.

Questions:
- IE caching: IE6-7 will cache any stylesheet that your HTML file points to, but if those stylesheets import stylesheets they will not be chached.
- uncool bits? Set pixel-size fonts, the body is bad enough but it’s uncool to do it to all the headers and elements, etc
- resources for understanding ems? ems for sizing and ems for fonts are very different concepts. A number of css books attempt to explain it
- zooming? Text zooming != page zooming. As page zoom is more widespread, pixel fonts less of an issue.
- Other media? Print is the only one in the frameworks, but that will change (media queries). When will we see TV styles again?
- css predictions 10 years from now? At least a dozen albums. No, Eric is not a prophet. Sry.
- Would you recommend using a framework? No, they are based on the assumptions of the people who make them. If you want a framework, develop it to reflect yourself or your team.

Empathy is the most important thing.
Real.com is a bad example - it doesn’t work very well
Links don’t look like links and vice versa
Site is driven by conflicting corporate needs rather than user needs
Half wants to distribute the free player and half wants to bury it in favor of the pay version

cosumersearch.com
No planned user experience, requres lots of motivation to drill down.
Unacceptable user experience
Can’t tell external ads from internal, cant tell adds from navigation

Good education
Hard to come by holistic education - not much out there for user experience
Excel vs Business
bobulate.com

Web people are not in charge of the web experience
If your web site resembles your org chart, you fail.

Who speaks for web design?
The public doesn’t understand the web (opinions come from places that don’t understand user experience)

When you have contests, it perpetuates the same kinds of work.
Judges make judges out of similar work (intentionally or otherwise)

Journalists have a hard time talking about ideas; they concentrate on money or other tangibles.

A bunch of new templates for Blogger: minima is the most popular. That design is iconic and an example of “landmark web design”, seems custom-designed no matter what the content is.

Guitar Solo
Design is not a heroic or impressive thing; the design is to represent your brand, not make the users jaws drop. Good design is invisible! People don’t get burned out on it.

Empathetic design gets away from Agile vs User-centered. Put the work in front of real users and redesign until it works.