When to choose Susy; when to choose Blueprint; when to choose x?

[Charles Roper]

Hey all,

I was just wondering: are there any scenarios where a particular
framework implementation in Compass is preferred? I am currently fairly
comfortable with Blueprint, but Susy and some of the others look
interesting too. When might I want to choose, say, Susy over Blueprint
and vice versa? Are any of the other frameworks particularly suited for
a given application?

The reason I ask this is because I noticed that Eric mention that Susy
isn't just for elastic grids, and that piqued my interest.

Many thanks,
Charles
--
Charles Roper
http://charlesroper.com | http://twitter.com/charlesroper

[Eric Meyer]

Charles,

I can't speak for the others. I never used (or liked) frameworks
outside of compass. I tried once and decided I was spending too much
time altering non-semantic class names in my HTML. Compass puts those
same alterations back into the CSS where they belong. That's true for
any of the plugin options.

When I came to Compass I took a look around at the plugins that
existed. My first complaint was simply that I had my own way I liked
my CSS to work: fluid on the inside with a shell that set the
structure (usually elastic for me, but potentially also fixed or
fluid). The system is based on Natalie Downe's CSS System, and I like
it. I don't want to give it up.

The second complaint is that most of the other plugins (Blueprint etc)
weren't built with Compass in mind. They were just ported. Which is an
improvement, but it doesn't take advantage of everything Compass has
to offer. Because of the way they were built originally, they aren't
as flexible to any style of site. Most are fixed-width at the core and
making them anything else is a bit more work. So I built my own (Susy)
to do things the way I like them done.

For me: Susy is built to work the way that I work, and is flexible
enough to cover any range of site styles. Why switch ever? I assume
the main strength of the others is familiarity - you can keep using
the framework you like, but return to semantics and have Compass do
the work for you. I'm sure there are other advantages/disadvantages
here and there in the code between plugins, but I'm not sure they are
major.

Find a UI that makes sense to you for writing, and output that you can
be proud of on a website. Don't use one that you don't understand
underneath. Check under the hood. The level of abstraction offered by
Compass shouldn't keep you from knowing exactly what code you are
putting out into the world.

Happy coding!
Eric

[Chris Eppstein]

I think the decision anxiety around which "grid framework" to use is a key issue that compass will face as it becomes more widely adopted. It would be awesome if someone would volunteer to write up an in-depth comparison of them as a blog post or wiki page.

The biggest hole in compass frameworks is in the area of typography. The YUI font system is pretty smart (we use it at my work), and baseline has a port(http://github.com/tdreyno/compass-baseline), but it's not customizable like it ought to be, and the blueprint typography module falls flat if you want to change the baseline size. I keep meaning to really dig into that aspect, but as the compass community grows, I'm starting to think that one of you is probably better suited to do it...

Chris

[Brandon Mathis]

I agree it would be great to have a standalone typography framework. I've been working on something myself but now, I'm thinking about doing something based on the web readability project.

source: http://code.google.com/p/better-web-readability-project/

example: http://www.allapis.com/Better-Web-Readability-Project-CSS-Library/typography.html

cool project: http://readable-app.appspot.com/setup.html?better_web_readability

I think the great part about this is that it puts a focus on readability, but I'd love to see it be flexible with the Sass mixins.

- Brandon Mathis

[Alex Cabrera]

I think what is great about Compass is the ability to make some really
opinionated extensions without having to invest too much time or
effort. I rolled my own extension, Graphpaper
(http://github.com/alexcabrera/graphpaper) because I wanted a
lightweight alternative to Blueprint, specifically geared to
fixed-width grids, and made few assumptions about the design. I'd love
to put together a writeup of the project for the Compass wiki.

Susy is a great project and would be my first choice if I was building
a liquid or elastic site.

One of the aspects of the Compass site redesign that I really wanted
to tackle is giving new users an idea of what the community considers
the best (or at least most actively used) extension for any given
task. We've worked that into the home page design but still need to
flesh it out a bit more.

Alex Cabrera
Interactive Director, Policus
http://policus.com

[Chris Blow]

Great ideas about the typography expansion -- I totally agree that this needs to happen. I could contribute particularly a section on Arabic best practices... 

I started a wiki page for it!

http://wiki.github.com/chriseppstein/compass/web-readability-project-integration

Please edit into it if you get started.

PS: Alex i love graphpaper and your iterative design approach described on github. Forked!

c

[Eric Meyer]

I'd love to see a write-up of the available plugins. I don't have a
clear image in mind of how a typography module would work. What I've
seen so far seems to tie you into certain sizes, line-heights or even
fonts. I'd love a better explanation - or just a great implementation
to look at.

-e

On Oct 5, 6:12 pm, Chris Blow <cgb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Great ideas about the typography expansion -- I totally agree that  
> this needs to happen. I could contribute particularly a section on  
> Arabic best practices...
>
> I started a wiki page for it!
>

> http://wiki.github.com/chriseppstein/compass/web-readability-project-...

>
> Please edit into it if you get started.
>
> PS: Alex i love graphpaper and your iterative design approach  
> described on github. Forked!
>
> c
>
> On Oct 5, 2009, at 2:02 PM, Brandon Mathis wrote:
>
> > I agree it would be great to have a standalone typography framework.  
> > I've been working on something myself but now, I'm thinking about  
> > doing something based on the web readability project.
>
> > source:http://code.google.com/p/better-web-readability-project/

> > example:http://www.allapis.com/Better-Web-Readability-Project-CSS-Library/typ...

> > cool project:http://readable-app.appspot.com/setup.html?better_web_readability
>
> > I think the great part about this is that it puts a focus on  
> > readability, but I'd love to see it be flexible with the Sass mixins.
>
> > - Brandon Mathis
>
> > On Oct 5, 2009, at 3:54 PM, Chris Eppstein wrote:
>
> >> I think the decision anxiety around which "grid framework" to use  
> >> is a key issue that compass will face as it becomes more widely  
> >> adopted. It would be awesome if someone would volunteer to write up  
> >> an in-depth comparison of them as a blog post or wiki page.
>
> >> The biggest hole in compass frameworks is in the area of  
> >> typography. The YUI font system is pretty smart (we use it at my  
> >> work), and baseline has a port(http://github.com/tdreyno/compass-baseline
> >> ), but it's not customizable like it ought to be, and the blueprint  
> >> typography module falls flat if you want to change the baseline  
> >> size. I keep meaning to really dig into that aspect, but as the  
> >> compass community grows, I'm starting to think that one of you is  
> >> probably better suited to do it...
>
> >> Chris
>

> >> On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 1:37 PM, Eric Meyer <eriii...@gmail.com>  

[Charles Roper]

Thanks for the feedback - very useful. I can see I'm going to have to
roll my sleeves up and give each grid system a try. Susy first, I
think. That comparison / matrix of features would sure be useful.
Thinking about it, it would also be a useful thing for new grid system
authors as a kind of check-list of features to implement or
consciously ignore, or consciously focus on.

One further point: does the grid system allow for content to be out of
order? It's possible to force Blueprint to present content out of
order, but it feels like a hack. Do any of the grid systems allow for
placing content in any order as a first-class feature?

Typography systems are also very interesting; I don't like Blueprint's
at all. As Eric suggests, it might be an idea to explorer here what a
typography framework should, and shouldn't, do.

Cheers,
Charles

[Chris Eppstein]

YUI is a source-order independent grid layout.

[Eric Meyer]

I pull off a fair amount of source-order adjustment in Susy just by
changing the directions of floats and thinking carefully about what
items get grid declarations. I'm not sure how a system would become
more independent than that without using absolute positioning?

On Oct 7, 4:30 am, Chris Eppstein <ch...@eppsteins.net> wrote:
> YUI is a source-order independent grid layout.
>
> On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 11:43 PM, Charles Roper

> <reac...@charlesroper.co.uk>wrote: