Why I hate Blueprint CSS
Posted by on Wed, 18 Jun 2008
So I have sat down to try my hands on Blueprint CSS. Blueprint is a CSS frame work that makes it very easy to code complicated layouts. The idea of front end developers having frame works is relatively new. Blueprint CSS makes it very easy to set up a full blown CSS layout with out editing any CSS.
I read all the documentation, and set up a few layouts, and was hardly even touching the CSS, at first I thought that this was great then I realized that it was like designing with tables, except instead of table tags, you just have div soup. You basically set up the layout all in class attribute of your divs. The reason CSS was introduced was to separate content from style. When you use a frame work like Blueprint you are not doing that, your mixing it together and making soup.
I also hate Blueprint CSS because it uses pixels all the way through its code, there for it makes it very difficult to change its predefined static width of 950px. So developing and designing fluid width layouts is out of the question. A simple solution to this would be to make the width fluid, and base everything off of percents rather then pixels, because 100% of 950px is always going to be 950px. Doing things with percents would allow for fluid or fixed width layouts with ease.
Blueprint CSS is also very heavy in file size, first you have to either embed it in your current CSS, or have it as a separate style sheet, then you have to add in a lengthy class attribute to each of your div tags, so all the html you have just became fatter. The CSS size really isn’t a problem, but when you are adding to my lean and clean HTML we are gonna have a problem.
My last issue with Blueprint CSS is the fact that it changes my colors on my fonts, and I have to go searching through there CSS files to change it, or use an ugly !important.