Layouts

Someone's beenYahooing "premade layouts" so I thought I'd make it the subject of this entry. I remember searching the Web for premade CSS layouts for this site. I had wanted to try something of the CSS variety, having heard and read of the ease with which cascading style sheets can be used to render interesting layouts to any website without the need for tables. Way before then I had followed closely the journey of A List Apart's transition from HTML table-based layouts to CSS design. "There are journeys" ALA states, "that touch the deepest core of the human spirit. And then there is this one. This is a journey from six years of conventional web design practice to the way we'll build sites in the future. Only it's not set in the future. You're soaking in it."

Myself... in the past, I've designed several personal pages; couldn't do them without making use of tables since content appeared clean and neat but, for some reason I had come to like using frames even before I caught on to using CSS. I guess for me, designing a framed site really allowed me to become more "creative," my goal then being to design an attractive content-based site which was easily accessible to others. As Creative Day puts it: "This web site is aimed to let us share about something we ALL have in common, creativity. You might think creativity is a "artist" thing, but hey, no, everybody has it. Yes, your plumber has it, your dentist has it, everybody as it. But do we all use it in the same way? In which ways are people using creativity in their everyday life, to solves everyday problems and make life better?

Anyway, I even went so far as to read David Siegel's Creating Killer Websites Online. As to the subject of frames, I've found Marc Klein's to be an interesting one to look at as a framed example and as if that weren't enough, the site is exclusively done in images. I love it! Another favorite of mine is Colors by Magdalena Donea, a very creative woman whom I admire. By the way in case you are interested, Women in Design is a very nice feature served up at Pixel Surgeon. Again, as to frames, there are many other examples that are worth a look or two or more, if for nothing else than for sheer inspiration. But getting back to CSS layouts, I've come across many--some seemingly simple and others rather detailed and complex, but I admit that I'm impressed with the ability of CSS to somehow make the unseen personal side of a Web author become seen even before one goes on to read content. This type of layout comes across as a form of defamiliarized technique; a sort of merging of the bridge between creative at and literature, making the unseen and unfamiliar, seen and familiar.

The style you see here is one of Eric Costello's Glish layouts. I used this layout as first out of curiosity and then I became hooked. I really makes updating the site much easier than say, if I had to go back and edit something done in HTML table/frames design. There are however, sections of this site where I use tables; purely preferential, though I'm sure I shouldn't have to if I knew more or all there is to know about CSS. However, other sites with great examples are: Owen Briggs's / Little Boxes / BlueRobot's / CSS Layout Reservoir / Firda Beka's / CSS Colouring Book / WebDev's / Free CSS Layout Templates / and Eric Meyer's / Css/Edge /. For any kind of layout for your personal site or weblog a good resource is Beautify Your Diary and my personal favorite Elysian Fields Designs. If you've read this far, I hope you found something of interest. Let me know...