I’ve started using Yahoo!’s CSS templates that are a part of their YUI (Yahoo! User Interface) library. They have four CSS templates, reset, fonts, grids and base. They’re very handy and simplify design.
Reset basically makes everything look the same for each web browser, and is probably the CSS template you want to include in all your HTML files. Fonts kind of does the same, except for fonts, but also provides appropriate degradation paths and consistent font sizing.
After reset neutralizes styles across browsers, base applies simple styles to html elements that will work across browsers. And finally, grids is pretty neat, it gives you default templates for laying out your page in different widths, as well as organizing content into columns of various sizes.
These templates are handy in that they don’t overtake everything and allow you to easily make adjustments and changes however you like. But also they think of other details you might not consider, such as search engine optimization:
Template columns are source-order independent, so you can put your most important content first in the markup layer for improved accessibility and search engine optimization (SEO).
Anyway, the YUI CSS templates are another tool you can use to save a bit of time while building pages, and is worth checking out. I was amazed while looking around the net and checking out the HTML source of various pages just how many pages were using these CSS templates!
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