Up until now, I’ve never liked the idea of using a framework to code websites and web applications. I know that it would be much easier in a lot of cases to use one, rather than re-inventing the wheel all by myself. But I could never quite get into using them. I tried several times, I really did. I just couldn’t adapt my workflow and personal style to them.
But in the past month or so that has changed, a lot. I’ve started using frameworks on several new of my work projects (all of which are still in development). I guess you could say that my experience diving into WordPress a few months back really changed my perspective on things. If you think about it, WordPress itself is just one big PHP/MySQL framework, with a lot of extra, and very useful, add-ons.
jQuery is one such framework for Javascript. I haven’t really coded with this myself, but every Javascript add-on I’ve used in recent months utilizes jQuery. There are lots of others, but this is definitely the most widely-used at the moment. So once I actually get into writing more Javascript, I’ll probably favor this one.
Blueprint is a beautiful CSS framework that I’ve actually had a copy of for a long time. A while back when I was trying out a few CSS frameworks, I downloaded a copy and then just left it in my library. Then I was browsing for a particular code snippet two weeks ago when I stumbled across it, and decided that it would be perfect for a design I was about to start. It worked amazingly, and now I’ve started two other designs using it, with several more coming.
I guess frameworks aren’t all bad, in fact, I’ll probably be using one or more of the above (likely all three) on many of my upcoming projects. It saves so much time and I’m kinda over re-inventing the wheel every time I sit down to code.