Tony Thomas » css

Blueprint Optional Fancy-Type Plugin

admin — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 19:58:38 +0000

The Baseline Development Wordpress Theme has Blueprint plugged in already. There are some optional Blueprint plugins you can take advantage of. We’ll take a look at the fancy-type plug-in.

First of all, to link it in just add this to header.php:

The first thing this will do for you is indent your paragraphs:

/* Indentation instead of line shifts for sibling paragraphs. */
   p + p { text-indent:2em; margin-top:-1.5em; }
   form p + p  { text-indent: 0; } /* Don't want this in forms. */

Next up is the alt class for some fancy type:

/* For great looking type, use this code instead of asdf:
   asdf
   Best used on prepositions and ampersands. */

.alt {
  color: #666;
  font-family: "Warnock Pro", "Goudy Old Style","Palatino","Book Antiqua", Georgia, serif;
  font-style: italic;
  font-weight: normal;
}

You also get a class for fancy quote marks:

/* For great looking quote marks in titles, replace "asdf" with:
   “asdf”
   (That is, when the title starts with a quote mark).
   (You may have to change this value depending on your font size). */

.dquo { margin-left: -.5em; }

Reduced size type with incremental leading:

/* Reduced size type with incremental leading
   (http://www.markboulton.co.uk/journal/comments/incremental_leading/)

   This could be used for side notes. For smaller type, you don't necessarily want to
   follow the 1.5x vertical rhythm -- the line-height is too much.

   Using this class, it reduces your font size and line-height so that for
   every four lines of normal sized type, there is five lines of the sidenote. eg:

   New type size in em's:
     10px (wanted side note size) / 12px (existing base size) = 0.8333 (new type size in ems)

   New line-height value:
     12px x 1.5 = 18px (old line-height)
     18px x 4 = 72px
     72px / 5 = 14.4px (new line height)
     14.4px / 10px = 1.44 (new line height in em's) */

p.incr, .incr p {
	font-size: 10px;
	line-height: 1.44em;
	margin-bottom: 1.5em;
}

And finally the caps class:

/* Surround uppercase words and abbreviations with this class.
   Based on work by Jørgen Arnor Gårdsø Lom [http://twistedintellect.com/] */

.caps {
  font-variant: small-caps;
  letter-spacing: 1px;
  text-transform: lowercase;
  font-size:1.2em;
  line-height:1%;
  font-weight:bold;
  padding:0 2px;
}

Go here to take a look at what these classes do in practice.Similar Posts:

Why Use Blueprint and the 960 Grid System in the Baseline Theme?

admin — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 15:55:11 +0000

An Inventory of Blueprint’s Style Resets and Useful Classes

A friend contacted me about using the Baseline Wordpress theme, but asked why I included both Blueprint and the 960 Grid System. The short answer is that Blueprint has a number of browser resets that I like to take advantage of and 960 GS offers greater flexibility in terms of the width of columns and their gutter widths. Especially if you want to adhere to the Golden Ratio for design. 960 pixels divides very neatly into 3.

Let’s take a look at what Blueprint does to reset some things to establish a cross-browser baseline. First of all, all browsers have their own default style sheet for styling HTML elements. For example, here is Firefox’s style sheet that defines how the browser will render HTML if you don’t define any styles. Unfortunately, all browser’s default style sheets vary. Blueprint resets everything to level the field. Let’s take a look at src/reset.css in your Blueprint directory.

/* --------------------------------------------------------------

   reset.css
   * Resets default browser CSS.

-------------------------------------------------------------- */

html, body, div, span, object, iframe,
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, p, blockquote, pre,
a, abbr, acronym, address, code,
del, dfn, em, img, q, dl, dt, dd, ol, ul, li,
fieldset, form, label, legend,
table, caption, tbody, tfoot, thead, tr, th, td {
  margin: 0;
  padding: 0;
  border: 0;
  font-weight: inherit;
  font-style: inherit;
  font-size: 100%;
  font-family: inherit;
  vertical-align: baseline;
}

body {
  line-height: 1.5;
}

/* Tables still need 'cellspacing="0"' in the markup. */
table { border-collapse: separate; border-spacing: 0; }
caption, th, td { text-align: left; font-weight: normal; }
table, td, th { vertical-align: middle; }

/* Remove possible quote marks (") from , . */
blockquote:before, blockquote:after, q:before, q:after { content: ""; }
blockquote, q { quotes: "" ""; }

/* Remove annoying border on linked images. */
a img { border: none; }

I don’t want to spend tons of time going over this except to say that the cascading nature of cascading styles means that no matter what your browser’s default style sheet is, all of the tags above have now been reset.

Just as important is Blueprint’s treatment of type. If we look at src/typography.css, we’ll find that all of the font sizes have been reset. This is very important and saves lots of time getting things to look the same across browsers. First it resets font size for the body and sets the default font families to sans-serif:

/* Default font settings.
   The font-size percentage is of 16px. (0.75 * 16px = 12px) */
body {
  font-size: 75%;
  color: #222;
  background: #fff;
  font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
}

Next the headings are all reset. First the font weight (curiously) is set to “normal” and the color set to #111 (black):

h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { font-weight: normal; color: #111; }

Then the sizes and bottom margins are set:

h1 { font-size: 3em; line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0.5em; }
h2 { font-size: 2em; margin-bottom: 0.75em; }
h3 { font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 1em; }
h4 { font-size: 1.2em; line-height: 1.25; margin-bottom: 1.25em; }
h5 { font-size: 1em; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 1.5em; }
h6 { font-size: 1em; font-weight: bold; }

After that, margins are removed from any images within headings:

h1 img, h2 img, h3 img,
h4 img, h5 img, h6 img {
  margin: 0;
}

After headings, we come to the p tag. Zero margin on top, left and right with a 1.5 em margin at the bottom of each paragraph:

p           { margin: 0 0 1.5em; }

Next, alignment classes for images with 1.5 em margins and 0 padding:

p img.left  { float: left; margin: 1.5em 1.5em 1.5em 0; padding: 0; }
p img.right { float: right; margin: 1.5em 0 1.5em 1.5em; }

Anchors come after that with a default blue color and black hover and focus pseudoclasses:

a:focus,
a:hover     { color: #000; }
a           { color: #009; text-decoration: underline; }

blockquote get’s a margin, gray color and italics:

blockquote  { margin: 1.5em; color: #666; font-style: italic; }

The strong tag is bold–as it should be:

strong      { font-weight: bold; }

The em and dfn tags are italicized and dfn is bold:

em,dfn      { font-style: italic; }
dfn         { font-weight: bold; }

The sup and sub tags get a line height of zero:

sup, sub    { line-height: 0; }

The abbr and acronym tags are gray and get a dotted bottom border (which I find a little curious):

abbr,
acronym     { border-bottom: 1px dotted #666; }

address tags get the same margin as paragraphs but with italics:

address     { margin: 0 0 1.5em; font-style: italic; }

The del tag (which you should be using instead of strike) gets a gray color:

del         { color:#666; }

Preformatted (pre) tags get at 1.5 em top and bottom margin and a zero right and left margin. Also, pre, code & tt are set to monospace fonts at 1 em with a line-height of 1.5 em:

pre 				{ margin: 1.5em 0; white-space: pre; }
pre,code,tt { font: 1em 'andale mono', 'lucida console', monospace; line-height: 1.5; }

After that we move on to lists. Nested lists (ol & ul) get a zero top and bottom margin with a 1.5 em right and left margin:

li ul,
li ol       { margin:0 1.5em; }

All lists get a zero top margin, 1.5 em right margin, 1.5 em bottom margin and a 1.5 em left margin:

ul, ol      { margin: 0 1.5em 1.5em 1.5em; }

Unordered lists default to a disc style and ordered lists are set to decimal for their list style:

ul          { list-style-type: disc; }
ol          { list-style-type: decimal; }

Definition list margins are set. dl and dt tags are set to bold:

dl          { margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; }
dl dt       { font-weight: bold; }
dd          { margin-left: 1.5em;}

Tables are up next. Tables themselves get a 1.4 em bottom margin and 100% width. Table headers (th) are bold with #c3d9ff background color. Table headings, table data (td) and caption get some padding. A table row (tr) “even” class is established with a different background color. Table footers (tfoot) are italicized and finally, caption is given a background color of #eee.

table       { margin-bottom: 1.4em; width:100%; }
th          { font-weight: bold; }
thead th 		{ background: #c3d9ff; }
th,td,caption { padding: 4px 10px 4px 5px; }
tr.even td  { background: #e5ecf9; }
tfoot       { font-style: italic; }
caption     { background: #eee; }

Finally we get to “Miscellaneous Classes”. small, large and hide classes are pretty self explanatory:

.small      { font-size: .8em; margin-bottom: 1.875em; line-height: 1.875em; }
.large      { font-size: 1.2em; line-height: 2.5em; margin-bottom: 1.25em; }
.hide       { display: none; }

Some useful classes are established next with loud, highlight, added and removed. The quiet class is simple set to gray.:

.quiet      { color: #666; }

loud is set to black:

.loud       { color: #000; }

highlight has a yellow background:

.highlight  { background:#ff0; }

added has a green background with white text:

.added      { background:#060; color: #fff; }

And removed has a dark red background with white text:

.removed    { background:#900; color: #fff; }

Finally, there are first, last, top and bottom classes. First just makes sure there is no margin or padding on the left:

.first      { margin-left:0; padding-left:0; }

last does the same, but on the right:

.last       { margin-right:0; padding-right:0; }

top does what first and last did, but on the top (of course):

.top        { margin-top:0; padding-top:0; }

And bottom does what first, last and top did, but does it on the bottom:

.bottom     { margin-bottom:0; padding-bottom:0; }

Finally, we’re going to take a look at what Blueprint offers for forms. Let’s take a look at src/forms.css. The first thing we have is some styling for label, fieldset and legend tags.

Labels are bold, fieldset has a 1.4 em padding and a 1.5 em bottom margin with a gray border. legend is also bold with a 1.2 em font-size:

label       { font-weight: bold; }
fieldset    { padding:1.4em; margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; border: 1px solid #ccc; }
legend      { font-weight: bold; font-size:1.2em; }

Next text and title classes are established for input tags and they are given the same formatting as textarea and select tags:

input.text, input.title,
textarea, select {
  margin:0.5em 0;
  border:1px solid #bbb;
}

Next pseudoclasses are formatted for focus on form elements to change the border to black.

input.text:focus, input.title:focus,
textarea:focus, select:focus {
  border:1px solid #666;
}

Next up input text classes are set to 300px wide with 5px padding. The input title class is also given a 1.5 em font size. textarea is a little wider and higher with 5px of padding:

input.text,
input.title   { width: 300px; padding:5px; }
input.title   { font-size:1.5em; }
textarea      { width: 390px; height: 250px; padding:5px; }

Last but absolutely not least are some nice form validation classes you can take advantage of. The notice, success and error classes function for just what their names suggest. By now I’m going to assume you can read the styles so I won’t inventory these one by one except to say that they’re nice, intuitive classes for form validation.

.error,
.notice,
.success    { padding: .8em; margin-bottom: 1em; border: 2px solid #ddd; }

.error      { background: #FBE3E4; color: #8a1f11; border-color: #FBC2C4; }
.notice     { background: #FFF6BF; color: #514721; border-color: #FFD324; }
.success    { background: #E6EFC2; color: #264409; border-color: #C6D880; }
.error a    { color: #8a1f11; }
.notice a   { color: #514721; }
.success a  { color: #264409; }

The point of all of this is that none of these are reset by the 960 grid established in the Baseline theme. Blueprint does a really nice job of resetting your styles and also includes a handful of other useful classes. What it doesn’t offer that the 960 Grid System does is flexibility with design width, column width and gutter width. That’s why I decided to rely on the 960 Grid System for establishing the columns and combine it with Blueprint for it’s wonderful job of resetting the styles.

Plus, I’ve been meaning to document all of these styles in Blueprint for a while now. If you don’t use my Baseline theme, this may also provide useful in terms of documenting what Blueprint is doing for you. Take a look at this page to see what some of the classes like error or success look like.Similar Posts:

Introducing the Baseline Development Wordpress Theme

admin — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 01:53:16 +0000

I’ve come up with some habits that I’ve developed from building themes for Wordpress over the years. One, is to start with a nearly blank style sheet. I also like to hook in several JavaScript libraries and CSS frameworks from the start to take advantage of things like JQuery, Blueprint’s CSS reset and Superfish menus.

I’ve decided to build and release an XHTML 1.0 version and release it as a springboard for others who may want to take advantage of the same sets of tools. The theme isn’t much to look at (that’s the point), but it includes:

Blueprint CSS framework
960 Grid System
JQuery 1.4.0
JQuery UI 1.7.1
Superfish JQuery menu (with HoverIntent.js)
IE8 JavaScript Library
Widget-enabled sidebar
Test Content file from WP-Candy
Valid XHTML 1.0

More information here.

If you want to use all of these tools, you’re all set. If you want to use a few, it’s just a matter of removing them from header.php.

First off, I really like Blueprint’s browser reset, so I wanted to include that here. I also like the flexibility the 960 Grid System offers in terms of column width. As a result, I’ve included them both.

If you don’t wish to use any of these, simply remove them from header.php. Next up is the Superfish CSS:

You must keep this if you’re using Superfish. If you’re not going to use Superfish, you should remove these lines too:

Next is Blueprint’s Internet Explorer CSS reset:

I’ve also had good luck using the IE8 JavaScript library, so that’s included next:

Then JQuery and JQuery UI libraries:

That’s it. All the frameworks and libraries are loaded. If you don’t think you’ll need any one of them, you can just take them out. WARNING: The layout of the columns does rely on the 960 Grid System CSS file. If you take that out of the head the columns won’t work and you’ll break the layout.

Otherwise this should give you a good start that will allow you to take advantage of tons of cool JQuery stuff and leverages a very popular CSS Grid System for laying out columns. It should be easy to modify this theme to fit your own design.

Download the theme here.Similar Posts:

Blueprint: Taking a Close Look at grid.css

admin — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 02:31:23 +0000

About Blueprint

Blueprint is a CSS framework, which aims to cut down on your development time. It gives you a solid foundation to build your project on top of, with an easy-to-use grid, sensible typography, useful plugins, and even a stylesheet for printing.

.container

/* A container should group all your columns. */
.container {
width: 950px;
margin: 0 auto;
}

container is where it all begins. This establishes your centered div with a width of 950 pixels. If you've done much CSS, this should look pretty familiar:

margin: 0 auto; /* This is what centers the div */

Not much else to say except all of your other columns should be inside a div with the container class. Let's move on.

.showgrid

.showgrid { background: url(src/grid.png);  }

showgrid is a nice tool to display your columns when you're laying out a page. Simply add it to the container div like so:

DIV contents

Once you're satisfied with how things are positioned, remove showgrid from your classes.

Let's skip down to line 33 or so.

.span-x

/* Sets up basic grid floating and margin. */
div.span-1, div.span-2, div.span-3, div.span-4, div.span-5,
div.span-6, div.span-7, div.span-8, div.span-9, div.span-10,
div.span-11, div.span-12, div.span-13, div.span-14, div.span-15,
div.span-16, div.span-17, div.span-18, div.span-19, div.span-20,
div.span-21, div.span-22, div.span-23, div.span-24 {
  float: left;
  margin-right: 10px;
}

This just sets up your span-x columns to all float left. It's a bit counter-intuitive, but this makes them all wrap around to the right of each other. It also sets up the 10 pixel margin to the right of each one for a nice gutter. That is, except for last. last is always the last column and forces any div with a span-x class to go below it. It also has no right margin:

div.last { margin-right: 0; }

Next the span-x widths are set:

/* Use these classes to set the width of a column. */
.span-1  { width: 30px; }
.span-2  { width: 70px; }
.span-3  { width: 110px; }
.span-4  { width: 150px; }
.span-5  { width: 190px; }
.span-6  { width: 230px; }
.span-7  { width: 270px; }
.span-8  { width: 310px; }
.span-9  { width: 350px; }
.span-10 { width: 390px; }
.span-11 { width: 430px; }
.span-12 { width: 470px; }
.span-13 { width: 510px; }
.span-14 { width: 550px; }
.span-15 { width: 590px; }
.span-16 { width: 630px; }
.span-17 { width: 670px; }
.span-18 { width: 710px; }
.span-19 { width: 750px; }
.span-20 { width: 790px; }
.span-21 { width: 830px; }
.span-22 { width: 870px; }
.span-23 { width: 910px; }
.span-24, div.span-24 { width: 950px; margin: 0; }

Notice above that span-24 takes up the full width with no right margin. Want a wider gutter than the pre-established 10 pixels? No problem.

.append-x

/* Add these to a column to append empty cols. */
.append-1  { padding-right: 40px; }
.append-2  { padding-right: 80px; }
.append-3  { padding-right: 120px; }
.append-4  { padding-right: 160px; }
.append-5  { padding-right: 200px; }
.append-6  { padding-right: 240px; }
.append-7  { padding-right: 280px; }
.append-8  { padding-right: 320px; }
.append-9  { padding-right: 360px; }
.append-10 { padding-right: 400px; }
.append-11 { padding-right: 440px; }
.append-12 { padding-right: 480px; }
.append-13 { padding-right: 520px; }
.append-14 { padding-right: 560px; }
.append-15 { padding-right: 600px; }
.append-16 { padding-right: 640px; }
.append-17 { padding-right: 680px; }
.append-18 { padding-right: 720px; }
.append-19 { padding-right: 760px; }
.append-20 { padding-right: 800px; }
.append-21 { padding-right: 840px; }
.append-22 { padding-right: 880px; }
.append-23 { padding-right: 920px; }

Remember, each of the span-x columns are 30 pixels wide with a 10-pixel right margin. Likewise the above append-x classes will add an additional column to the right. Just do the math. span-1 adds 40 pixels. span-2, 80 pixels and so on. We can add columns to the left with the prepend classes in the same way.

.prepend-x

/* Add these to a column to prepend empty cols. */
.prepend-1  { padding-left: 40px; }
.prepend-2  { padding-left: 80px; }
.prepend-3  { padding-left: 120px; }
.prepend-4  { padding-left: 160px; }
.prepend-5  { padding-left: 200px; }
.prepend-6  { padding-left: 240px; }
.prepend-7  { padding-left: 280px; }
.prepend-8  { padding-left: 320px; }
.prepend-9  { padding-left: 360px; }
.prepend-10 { padding-left: 400px; }
.prepend-11 { padding-left: 440px; }
.prepend-12 { padding-left: 480px; }
.prepend-13 { padding-left: 520px; }
.prepend-14 { padding-left: 560px; }
.prepend-15 { padding-left: 600px; }
.prepend-16 { padding-left: 640px; }
.prepend-17 { padding-left: 680px; }
.prepend-18 { padding-left: 720px; }
.prepend-19 { padding-left: 760px; }
.prepend-20 { padding-left: 800px; }
.prepend-21 { padding-left: 840px; }
.prepend-22 { padding-left: 880px; }
.prepend-23 { padding-left: 920px; }

prepend-1 adds 40 pixels to the left of a column. prepend-2 adds 80 pixels and so on. As long as we're talking about positioning, let's skip ahead a little bit.

.push-x & .pull-x

/* Use these classes on an element to push it into the
   next column, or to pull it into the previous column.  */

.pull-1 { margin-left: -40px; }
.pull-2 { margin-left: -80px; }
.pull-3 { margin-left: -120px; }
.pull-4 { margin-left: -160px; }
.pull-5 { margin-left: -200px; }

.pull-1, .pull-2, .pull-3,
.pull-4, .pull-5, .pull-5 {
  float:left;
	position:relative;
}

.push-1 { margin: 0 -40px 1.5em 40px; }
.push-2 { margin: 0 -80px 1.5em 80px; }
.push-3 { margin: 0 -120px 1.5em 120px; }
.push-4 { margin: 0 -160px 1.5em 160px; }
.push-5 { margin: 0 -200px 1.5em 200px; }

.push-0, .push-1, .push-2,
.push-3, .push-4, .push-5 {
  float: right;
	position:relative;
}

pull-x and push-x function in a similar way to append-x and prepend-x, except they'll actually push columns into one another instead of creating a wider gutter. push-1 pushes the page element over to the right by one, 40-pixel column. pull-1 pulls the page element over to the left by one 40-pixel column.

We skipped over some stuff. Let's go back to it:

.border

/* Border on right hand side of a column. */
div.border {
  padding-right: 4px;
  margin-right: 5px;
  border-right: 1px solid #eee;
}

border adds a right-border to any page element. Notice the right padding, margin and 1-pixel border all add up to 10 pixels to maintain the standard 10-pixel gutter.

.colborder

colborder does the same except the right margin spans an entire column:

/* Border with more whitespace, spans one column. */
div.colborder {
  padding-right: 24px;
  margin-right: 25px;
  border-right: 1px solid #eee;
}

The right padding, margin and 1-pixel border add up to 50 pixels this time.

.box

box creates a padded box inside a column.

.box {
  padding: 1.5em;
  margin-bottom: 1.5em;
  background: #E5ECF9;
}

hr

hr gets a nice default setting to make sure it crosses your column:

hr {
  background: #ddd;
  color: #ddd;
  clear: both;
  float: none;
  width: 100%;
  height: .1em;
  margin: 0 0 1.45em;
  border: none;
}
hr.space {
  background: #fff;
  color: #fff;
}

I'm actually going to skip to the end because the clearfix classes seem a bit outmoded after reading the article they are based on. Read this article instead.

.clear

clear simply forces a column to go beneath the column before it.

.clear { clear:both; }

That's it. Hopefully reading this will give you a good sense of what positioning classes are available in Blueprint and how to use them. Please leave a comment if anything needs clarification.Similar Posts:

When Using a Grid Layout CSS Framework, Do the Math

admin — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 18:09:19 +0000

I recently spent an entire weekend trying to troubleshoot why Internet Explorer 6 kept wrapping the rightmost DIV in my design to the bottom of the page when no other browser did. In my case, I was using the Blueprint CSS framework that creates twenty-four 30 pixel columns, each with a 10 pixel right margin (except the 24th column, which has no right margin), to make a nice 950-pixel wide grid. The whole purpose of using a CSS framework is that it’s supposed to protect me from exactly the sort of problem I was having where different browsers display the page differently. I spent hours trying to figure out why Blueprint was failing in this case. Finally, on Sunday evening I figured it out. The enemy was not Blueprint. The enemy was me.

Above is an approximation of the Blueprint grid. (The thirty-pixel columns are in gray and the ten-pixel right margins in white.) Read the tutorial file for details, but basically, by defining “span-16″ as the class of your DIV, you wind up with a 630 pixel DIV with a ten-pixel right margin for a total of 640 pixels. Nice and neat, and it seemed perfect in my case since the photo I wanted to place on the right was 300 pixels wide. I even had ten pixels to spare. You’re probably a lot smarter than me, so you’ve already figured it out. Unfortunately, I spent the better part of a weekend working in this problem. Finally I was reduced to counting columns and I realized there’s no way to get a 300-pixel DIV using 40 pixel columns! Firefox, Safari & higher versions of Internet Explorer were more forgiving and formatted the page as I wanted. Only Internet Explorer 6 interpreted the code strictly in this case. The other browsers corrected for my math error. I blamed Blueprint for failing and Internet Explorer 6 for misinterpreting my CSS when I was at fault all along.

Forty X 7 (span-7) = 280. Just short of my needed 300 pixels. Forty X 8 = 320. Twenty pixels too wide which left an unwanted margin on the right of my photo. When I finally figured all of this out, I was able to use a combination of Blueprint classes and my own classes to consistently format the page the way I wanted.

Lesson learned: Leverage your CSS grid framework as much as possible, but also add up your columns to your page elements don’t get pushed around the page. It may still be necessary to define your own DIVS outside of the framework.Similar Posts:

Getting Blueprint CSS & JavaScript Libraries Into Your CakePHP Layout

admin — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 19:55:58 +0000

Updated 12/3/2008

The other day I wrote about getting the Blueprint CSS framework into your Wordpress theme. If you’re developing in CakePHP, it’s even easier to link multiple style sheets and JavaScript libraries to your layout file.


$css = array('blueprint/screen', 'blueprint/ie', 'style');

$jslibraries = array('prototype', 'scriptaculous', 'jquery');

echo $html->css('blueprint/print', 'stylesheet', 'media="print"');

echo $html->css($css, 'stylesheet', 'media=”screen, projection”');

echo $javascript->link($jslibraries);

?>
Let’s take these one at a time.
$css = array('blueprint/screen', 'blueprint/ie', 'style');
CakePHP’s html helper will load any css file you specify. First, make sure the css files are in app/webroot/css. Then put any css files you want to link to your layout in an array like I have above. You might have noticed that I didn’t include print in my array. That’s because we want to add an media=”print” as a separate attribute that the other style sheets won’t have.
Once they’re loaded into your array, simply put echo $html->css($css); in the head of your layout. The output will be:






We still haven’t linked our print style sheet. Make sure you link the print style sheet above the others so they override it. We can add media="print" by putting this into our layout head:
echo $html->css('blueprint/print', 'stylesheet', 'media="print"');
So now:
$css = array('blueprint/screen', 'blueprint/ie', 'style');

echo $html->css('blueprint/print', 'stylesheet', 'media="print"');

echo $html->css($css, 'stylesheet', 'media=”screen, projection”');
Results in:







Two things to note. In $html->css($path, $attributes), the first argument is the path from app/webroot/css. The second argument is html attributes.
Linking JavaScript libraries is very similar.
$jslibraries = array('prototype', 'scriptaculous', 'jquery');
This will link to prototype.js, scriptaculous.js and jquery.js respectively as long as there in app/webroot/js.
Put echo $javascript->link($jslibraries); into the head of your layout and you’re done. You have all three JavaScript libraries at your disposal.
Other good resources:

CakePHP Core Helpers
Developing With CakePHP
CakePHP API JavaScript link Helper
CakePHP API CSS link Helper

Similar Posts:

Getting Blueprint CSS & JavaScript Libraries Into Your CakePHP Layout
Incorporating Blueprint CSS Into Your New Wordpress Theme
Introducing the Baseline Development Wordpress Theme
Blueprint CSS Readme File
Baseline Theme Version 1.0.1



Incorporating Blueprint CSS Into Your New Wordpress Theme
admin — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 15:07:09 +0000
If you’re familiar with the Blueprint CSS framework, you already know it can make your life a lot easier. So how do you get it into your Wordpress theme? Luckily, Wordpress is designed to make your life easier too.
I’m assuming your know the basics of Wordpress Theme Development. That is, at the very least you need:

header.php
footer.php
index.php
style.css

Put those files in a folder named after your theme. And put that folder in /wordpressroot/wp-content/themes/.
Once you’ve gotten that far, download the Blueprint CSS Framework and drop the “blueprint” folder from that download into your theme’s directory.
Finally, to include the new CSS files into your theme, just add this code to your header:







Pay attention to the order. You want to make sure that href="" appears last in the list of style sheets. That’s your style.css where you can tailor the CSS for your specific design.
That’s it.Similar Posts:

Incorporating Blueprint CSS Into Your New Wordpress Theme
Getting Blueprint CSS & JavaScript Libraries Into Your CakePHP Layout
Introducing the Baseline Development Wordpress Theme
Baseline Theme Version 1.0.1
Blueprint CSS Readme File





Blueprint CSS Tutorial File
admin — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 21:25:46 +0000
Just like the README file for Blueprint CSS, I wanted to refer to the TUTORIAL file in a more readable format. Here it is formatted for easy reading.
Blueprint CSS Framework Tutorial
Welcome to this tutorial on Blueprint. It will give you a thorough intro to what you can do with the framework, and a few notes on what you shouldn’t do with it. Let’s get started.
About Blueprint
Blueprint is a CSS framework, designed to cut down on your development time. It gives you a solid foundation to build your CSS on top of, including some sensible default typography, a customizable grid, a print stylesheet and much more.
However, BP is not a silver bullet, and it’s best suited for websites where each page may require it’s own design. Take a look at existing BP pages before deciding if the framework is right for you. You may also check out the test files in the tests directory, which demonstrates most of the features in Blueprint.
The word “framework” may be a bit misleading in this context, since BP does not make suggestions on how you should organize or write your CSS. It’s more like a “css toolbox” with helpful bits and pieces, from which you may pick and choose based on your needs.
Structural Overview
From the bottom up, here are the CSS layers in Blueprint:

CSS reset: Removes any default CSS rules set by each browser.
Typography: Gives you some nice default typography and colors.
Grid: Provides a set of CSS classes for making grid layouts.

The second part of Blueprint are the scripts, which lets you customize most aspects of the framework, from column count and widths, to output paths and CSS class namespaces. We have two scripts:

Compressor: For compressing and customizing the source files.
Validator: 	For validating the Blueprint core files.

That’s the quick overview, so now we can finally get into the details. First, we’ll take a look at the CSS in Blueprint. We’ll then move on to the scripts, where I’ll show you how to customize the framework.
Setting Up Blueprint
To use Blueprint, you must include three files in your HTML:

blueprint/screen.css:	All CSS for screen, projection viewing.
blueprint/print.css: A basic stylesheet for printing.
blueprint/ie.css:	A few needed corrections for Internet Explorer

To include them, use the following HTML (make sure the href paths are correct):

 





Remember to add trailing slashes if you’re using XHTML (” />”).
Using the CSS in Blueprint
As mentioned before, there’s basically three layers of CSS in Blueprint. The first two layers, the browser CSS reset and the default typography, apply themselves by changing CSS of standard HTML elements.

In other words, you don’t need to change anything in these files. If you for instance want to change the font size, do this in your own stylesheet, so that it’s easy to upgrade Blueprint when new versions arrive.
Classes for Typography
While the typography of Blueprint mainly applies itself, there’s a few classes provided. Here’s a list of their names and what they do:

.small
Makes the text of this element smaller.
.large
Makes the text of this element larger.
.hide
Hides an element.
.quiet
Tones down the font color for this element.
.loud
Makes this elements text black.
.highlight
Adds a yellow background to the text.
.added
Adds green background to the text.
.removed 
Adds red background to the text.
.first
Removes any left sided margin/padding from the element.
.last
Removes any right sided margin/padding from the element.
.top
Removes any top margin/padding from the element.
.bottom
Removes any bottom margin/padding from the element.

Styling Forms
To make Blueprint style your input elements, each text input element should have the class .text, or .title, where .text is the normal size, and .title gives you an input field with larger text.
There’s also a few classes you may use for success and error messages:

div.error
Creates an error box (red).
div.notice
Creates a box for notices (yellow).
div.success
Creates a box for success messages (green).

Creating a Grid
The third layer is the grid CSS classes, which is the tool Blueprint gives you to create almost any kind of grid layout for your site. Keep in mind that most of the CSS behind the grid can be customized (explained below). In this section however, I’m using the default settings.
The default grid is made up of 24 columns, each spanning 30px, with a 10px margin between each column. The total width comes to 950px, which is a good width for 1024×768 resolution displays. If you’re interested in a narrower design, see the section on customizing the grid, below.
So how do you set up a grid? By using classes provided by Blueprint. To create a column, make a new 
, and apply one of the .span-x classes to it. For instance, if you want a 3-column setup, with two narrow and one wide column, a header and a footer here’s how you do it:





The header




The first column





The center column





The last column




The footer




In addition to the spans, there are two important classes you need to know about. First of all, every Blueprint site needs to be wrapped in a div with the class .container, which is usually placed right after the body tag.
Second, the last column in a row (which by default has 24 columns), needs the class .last to remove its left hand margin. Note, however, that each .span-24 don’t need the .last class, since these always span the entire width of the page.
To create basic grids, this is all you need to know. The grid CSS however, provides many more classes

for more intricate designs. To see some of them in action, check out the files in tests/parts/. These files demonstrate what’s possible with the grid in Blueprint.
Here’s a quick overview of the other classes you can use in to make your grid:

.append-x
Appends x number of empty columns after a column.
.prepend-x
Preppends x number of empty columns before a column.
.push-x
Pushes a column x columns to the left. Can be used to swap columns.
.pull-x
Pulls a column x columns to the right. Can be used to swap columns.
.border
Applies a border to the right side of the column.
.colborder
Appends one empty column, with a border down the middle.
.clear
Makes a column drop below a row, regardless of space.
.showgrid
Add to container or column to see the grid and baseline.

In this list, x is a number from 1 through 23 for append/prepend and 1 through 24 for push/pull. These numbers will of course change if you set a new number of columns in the settings file.
Here’s another example where we have four columns of equal width, with a border between the two first and the two last columns, as well as a four column gap in the middle:





The first column





The second column





The third column





The fourth (last) column




You may also nest columns to achieve the desired layout. Here’s a setup where we want four rectangles with two on top and two below on the first half of the page, and one single column spanning the second half of the page:
 






Top left





Top right





Bottom left





Bottom right







Second half of page




Try this code in your browser it it’s difficult to understand what it would look like. To see more examples on how to use these classes, check out /tests/parts/grid.html.
The Scripts
Blueprint comes with two scripts: one for compressing and customizing the CSS, and one for validating the core CSS files, which is handy if you’re making changes to these files.
The Validator
The validator has a fairly simple job – validate the CSS in the core BP files.  The script uses a bundled version of the W3C CSS validator to accomplish this.  To run it, you’ll need to have Ruby installed on your machine. You can then run the script like so: $ ruby validate.rb.
Note that there are a few validation errors shipping with Blueprint. These are known, and comes from a few CSS hacks needed to ensure consistent rendering across the vast browser field.
The Compressor
As the files you’ll include in your HTML are the compressed versions of the core CSS files, you’ll have to recompress the core if you’ve made any changes.  This is what the compressor script is for.
In addition this is where you customize the grid. To customize the grid, a special settings file is used, and the new CSS is generated once you run the compressor. The new compressed files will then reflect your settings file.
To recompress, you just have to run the script. This will parse the core CSS files and output new compressed files in the blueprint folder. As with the validator, Ruby has to be installed to use this script. In the lib directory, run: $ruby compress.rb
Calling this file by itself will pull files from blueprint/src and concatenate them into three files; ie.css, print.css, and screen.css. However, argument variables can be set to change how this works. Calling $ruby compress.rb -h will reveal basic arguments you can pass to the script.
Custom Settings
To learn how to use custom settings, read through the documentation within lib/compress.rbSimilar Posts:

Blueprint CSS Tutorial File
Blueprint: Taking a Close Look at grid.css
Blueprint CSS Readme File
When Using a Grid Layout CSS Framework, Do the Math
Why Use Blueprint and the 960 Grid System in the Baseline Theme?





Blueprint CSS Readme File
admin — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 20:45:10 +0000
Author’s note: This is word for word post of the Blueprint CSS file only because I’m tired of pulling up the text file and I’d rather read it in a nicely formatted HTML page. I’m sure others would prefer that too.
Blueprint CSS Framework Readme
Welcome to Blueprint! This is a CSS framework designed to cut down on your CSS development time.

It gives you a solid foundation to build your own CSS on. Here are some of the features BP provides out-of-the-box:

An easily customizable grid
Sensible default typography
A typographic baseline
Perfected browser CSS reset
A stylesheet for printing
Powerful scripts for customization
Absolutely no bloat!

Project Info

Web
Bug/Feature Tracking

Setup Instructions
Here’s how you set up Blueprint on your site.

Upload the “blueprint” folder in this folder to your server, and place it in whatever folder you’d like. A good choice would be your CSS folder.
Add the following three lines to every  of your site. Make sure the three href paths are correct (here, BP is in my CSS folder):






Remember to include trailing slashes (” />”) in these lines if you’re using XHTML.
For development, add the .showgrid class to any container or column to see the underlying grid.

Check out the plugins directory for more advanced functionality.

Tutorials

Tutorial on BlueFlavor
How to customize BP with the compressor script
How to use a grid in a layout
How to use a baseline in your typography

Files in Blueprint
The framework has a few files you should check out. Every file in the src directory contains lots of (hopefully) clarifying comments.
Compressed files (these go in the HTML):

blueprint/screen.css
blueprint/print.css
blueprint/ie.css

Source files:

blueprint/src/reset.css

This file resets CSS values that browsers tend to set for you.
blueprint/src/grid.css

This file sets up the grid (it’s true). It has a lot of classes you apply to  elements to set up any sort of column-based grid.
blueprint/src/typography.css

This file sets some default typography. It also has a few methods for some really fancy stuff to do with your text.
blueprint/src/forms.css

Includes some minimal styling of forms.
blueprint/src/print.css

This file sets some default print rules, so that printed versions of your site looks better than they usually would. It should be included on every page.
blueprint/src/ie.css

Includes every hack for our beloved IE6 and 7.

Scripts:

lib/compress.rb

A Ruby script for compressing and customizing your CSS. Set a custom namespace, column count, widths, output paths, multiple projects, and semantic class names. See commenting in compress.rb or run $ruby compress.rb -h for more information.
lib/validate.rb

Validates the Blueprint core files with the W3C CSS validator.

Other:

blueprint/plugins/

Contains additional functionality in the form of simple plugins for Blueprint. See individual readme files in the directory of each plugin for further instructions.
tests/

Contains html files which tests most aspects of Blueprint. Open tests/index.html for further instructions.

Extra Information

For credits and origins, see AUTHORS.
For license instructions, see LICENSE.
For the latest updates, see CHANGELOG.

Similar Posts:

Blueprint CSS Readme File
Incorporating Blueprint CSS Into Your New Wordpress Theme
Getting Blueprint CSS & JavaScript Libraries Into Your CakePHP Layout
Introducing the Baseline Development Wordpress Theme
Blueprint CSS Tutorial File