An UI Framework for (the front-end) of Websites
Posted under: There are many nice User Interface Frameworks for the Web. Some of the are made for Java (and they do a pretty good job of deuglifying it – at least for the user) but most of them can be used for every architecture, because they base solely on JavaScript (and / or JavaScript Frameworks like JQuery, MooTools, etc.) and CSS. Here’s a list of a few of them.
- Echo (Java Only)
- YUI (The best Yahoo has come up with. Period.)
- Mocha (Based Upon MooTools)
- Vaadin (This one looks pretty, pretty sexy – the best Java UI there was, is, and ever will be)
- jQuery UI (I have a feeling you know this one …)
While those Libraries are all very good and contain lots of widgets and other nice things – they are also big, hard to (learn to) use and did I say big? They are huge!
If you’re designing a CMS backend or an enterprise intranet solution you just have to use one of them. But if you’re “just” designing a “mid-range” website and you just like to provide a little more User Experience, those framworks / libraries are just overkill.
Now, whats the first thing you need if you start to build a website (from scratch)? A nice layout. Now there are a few options… you could spend some time building a CSS based cross-browser layout, you could just slam in a table or you could use a CSS framework. There are some very interesting, grid based CSS Frameworks. My favourite is blueprint – there are others, just do a google for “css frameworks”.
Now long story short – i slammed together a little, let’s say, website template, or website starter kit. This template (or kit) contains my micro ui widgets for jquery and a modified blueprint css framework.
Check a demo out here.
Now keep in mind: This is a work in progress and I’m creating this template for my own use (as well as for anyone’s who likes it).
Download the package here.
Now run along and create a beautiful website!