Are CSS Frameworks Really Worth Using?

Question

Is there anything that CSS Frameworks give that its not easy to make yourself?

Answer 1

The main use I have for CSS frameworks is that they tend to force you to think about how you're going to organise you code rather than provide you with indispensable tools for your day to day tasks.

For that reason, I'm a fan of boilerplate rather than things like blueprint as boilerplate tends to focus on how you structure your css stylesheets and imports rather than providing you with a collection of semantically confusing helper classes.

Answer 2

They are simply a convenience and as such are good for things like wireframing and rapid prototyping. They are probably also a good way to learn CSS layout aswell if you can familiarise yourself with the layout code.

What I don't like about CSS frameworks is that they encourage the use of non-semantic class names and are a bit heavy handed for a simpler designs. I still think it's very important to understand how CSS layout works and not to just rely on the frameworks because you'd be limiting your creativity and what you could achieve. Sometimes reading CSS files from the csszengarden site can teach you things you weren't sure of how to achieve.

For wireframing this is the most promising CSS framework I've seen: http://designinfluences.com/fluid960gs/