[xtom]

Over the past few months I've been exploring some of the popular CSS frameworks that are available out there at the moment. And really the two I've spent time with have been Foundation and Materialze but there are others too.

So what is a CSS framework?

Well if you're using a wysiwyg web design program like Xara Designer Pro or Xara Web Designer then you don't really need to worry too much about css frameworks as wysiwyg programs like these export their own vanilla flavour of css. The CSS is all handled automatically under the hood for you which is a huge time saver but sometimes you might see a fancy effect in use on some website and it might be using a framework to acheive the affect. Basically frameworks give a structured set of rules and methods for the css you use on your website and they come with some nice easy to add features like image carousels, image sliders, accordion menus, form controls, responsive layouts and a ton of other stuff. They also harness javasript for some of the features they offer. Basically though with a framework your not always building from scratch or re-inventing the wheel when working hands on with your website's CSS code and instead are using some preset building blocks and components.

So the reason I'm bringing this up here is because I've been going over on the CSS for the CMS so that it works in tandem better with any framework CSS you might decide to use or are already using. One of the core goals of XT-CMS has always been to allow the freedom to work with withever web design tool or method you choose to use whether that's a wysiwyg web design program, a CSS framework or even your own completely hand made designs.

So do you have a favourite framework? Do you even use one? Here's an article that sumarizes the popular css frameworks.