Template frameworks

Comment by Robert Vining on August 20, 2010 at 9:35am

In my mind, the framework allows a site builder who can't necessarily code a template, have some serious control on how the template looks.

I don't feel that it's something a business owner who gets a site turned over to him should really be messing with.

Comment by Torkil Johnsen on August 20, 2010 at 11:47am

Templating frameworks serve much of the same purposes as other frameworks:

- Less of the repetitive work
- More time to use on the new and shiny stuff
- Less repetitive code and duplication of code. See DRY principle.
- Over time, development of the framework makes it more robust and less buggy. A bug found and fixed in one template will never again appear in the following templates.
- A framework of more general code can be reused by many developers who can collaborate on improving it together.

To sum it up: Use frameworks instead of reinventing the wheel every time a template is created.

I wrote a blog post titled "What is the Nooku Framework and why should I care", which could be of interest.

Comment by Arno Zijlstra on August 20, 2010 at 1:12pm

Torkil, I think there is a difference, php frameworks deliver raw data in most cases but when template frameworks start to deliver html/css chunks it needs to just fit your standards, accessibility rules, guidelines and doc type kind of options.

I think such frameworks are nice candy for people that don't got the deeper knowledge of building but for most custom design projects they are just overkill and features like Alan describes will hardly be used.

Comment by Alan Sparkes on August 20, 2010 at 1:16pm

Arno that is my instinctive sense of the framework however I think there are various different audiences for the frameworks - until I get a true template dev perspcetive (ie "was it really quicker to build it with FrameworkX?") I might hold judgement .....thing is I am just not rushing to use one based on evidence so far...

Comment by Arno Zijlstra on August 20, 2010 at 2:33pm

Alan, what is your definition of a true template dev?

There's fundamental differences between building one template a month for a template club that needs to please lots of people and sell many times or building a custom one time template that is completely tailored to fit the brand and audience it needs to represent and serve. If you are creating a template for a site that needs to represent a pop-star and serve a young hip audience you may want some cool flashy stuff but if you are building a site for 70+ people about learning how to learn twitter or use skype you certainly don't need all that but rather good clear colors and fonts and font sizes. Some sites need to be as lightweight as possible for speed and cost and in some cases it's more important that the markup renders in certain order for SEO reasons for example, there's many many variables.

There is no walhala solution, but like always you need to pick the right tool that fits the job you need todo.

Comment by Torkil Johnsen on August 21, 2010 at 1:46pm

Arno: Why reinvent the wheel? If you build templates, I think you're using a framework already, probably your own, you're just not calling it "a framework" :)

Lots of CSS can be reused: Code for menus, typography, grids, specific usecases. Same goes for JS code and HTML-code, or PHP code for instance to minify and combine CSS/JS for instance.

Best-practice solutions for recurring problems like these (design patterns!) can be fitted into really useful packages, in this case called a templating framework. You find your favourites and you reuse them, that's at least my experience.

I have a templating framework myself for building templates: I use blueprint or 960gs as a basis for my CSS, plus some PHP code for minifying and combining JS/CSS. From there I sometimes write JS myself, but very often reuse previously built code snippets or classes. This is code that makes my template easier to build, it loads faster and less error-prone. I'm reusing well-known code that's been out on the road earlier. Bugs I find can be rolled back to sites using the same code already, where the bugs might not have been found yet.

So no wonder the template producers have made their own frameworks kind of formal. It's just the next logical step for them I guess.

Comment by Amy Stephen on August 21, 2010 at 8:04pm

Actually, Arno does have his own template framework that he shared in the Joomla! Magazine a couple of years ago. He just might not realize that they put a fancy name on that lately. ;)

Comment by Arno Zijlstra on August 22, 2010 at 2:25am

The thing for me is, I like to build from or use little base stuff and extent it with what is really needed in a specific situation instead of having a huge pile of stuff I don't need in the first place. Whether that is a php framework, template "framework" and even Joomla!. (there's still a diff between php frameworks that handle raw data in the background and template frameworks that handle markup and styles that render in the foreground)

Many template frameworks render lots of base HTML/CSS/JS for all kind of candy they can produce and I personally just don't want that unless I really need it but that my personal way of looking at it of course. In the post Amy refers too it basically comes down to that also, what is easier, build up from scratch or trim down from a club template? For me it is definitely building up and keep clean.

For me Joomla! should be trimmed down immensely, drop things like com_banners, com_messages, com_weblinks and many many many params all over the place. Clean base to extend with needed power.

Like I said in the previous reaction, it comes down to what you personally feel good about and picking the way or tools that fit the job.

Comment by Amy Stephen on August 22, 2010 at 8:22am

Arno - it's interesting looking at the various template frameworks. When they first started to emerge, I went back and looked at yours. These template frameworks say something about the work the designer who developed them provides. Yours shows your commitment to standards and simplicity. In the end, that really is what good designers have learned builds usable interfaces.

Comment by Torkil Johnsen on August 23, 2010 at 10:36am

Modular frameworks are still frameworks ;)

Look at MooTools, where you can create and download a package that contains the needed classes, on the fly. Pretty handy! I agree that bloat is not something you want. Like com_banners… bleh.

Comment

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• 2
• Next ›
• Page