Advantages of 960 Grid?

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Hello Everyone,
I'm new to Concrete5. For the past two years, I've been using Joomla to develop my sites, and althugh I find Joomla to be very powerful I was starting to feel overworked by the indirect nature of all the actions.

I'm considering a move to Concrete5.

Part of my decision to consider Concrete5 has to do with theming.

With Joomla, I started using the 960 Grid framework, because, as you may know, Joomla templates have specified spots ("modules") where content can be placed, so having an open grid of spaces to use helps.

It seems that in Concrete5, there is more of an open canvas to all themes, so maybe it is not as crucial to have something like 960 Grid in Concrete5?

What are the advantages of an open grid-like framework in Concrete5, as compared to other themes?

I'm sorry if this seems like a convoluted question, but it will help me understand the general theme structure of Concrete5!

Thanks,
Matthew

 
ThemeGoodness replied on at Permalink Reply
ThemeGoodness
Hi,

In my opinion the advantages to a grid are still the same it is just that what you are putting in them is not so rigid as Joomla likes it to be. To me the advantage of the grid is always having a set size and just having to add a class to it to get the desired effect. ie columns etc.

Steph
MatthewSchenker replied on at Permalink Reply
Steph,
Thank you very much for your response! I'm still learning how Concrete5 works.

It's difficult to explain what I'm after here. These concepts seem easy to imagine, until one tries to explain them. Then it's a real challenge -- especially when crossing over from one system (Joomla) to another (Concrete5)...

It seems that Concrete5 does not specify the exact position on the screen where an element must be (i.e., a slider does not need to be put in something called the Grid4 position, which is pegged to the lower right-hand side of the screen). In Concrete5, if I'm not mistaken, you just have general areas (center of the page or sidebar) in which to add elements. Therefore, it seems a grid system would be less crucial for flexibility in Concrete5.

If you have design experience with Joomla, you'll know what I mean: every theme has such specific "locations" in which to put elements.

Anyway, sorry to introduce such a messy discussion! After I get a chance to use Concrete5 more, I'm sure I'll get a better handle on it.

Thanks again for your help,
Matthew
Fernandos replied on at Permalink Reply
Fernandos
Hello, Matthew!

I think you should take a look at the "layouts" feature. I'm sure you'll love it.

http://www.concrete5.org/documentation/general-topics/how-a-page-lo...
ThemeGoodness replied on at Permalink Reply
ThemeGoodness
Welcome =)
It's been awhile since I did anything with Joomla but ya it was pretty much "module position1" ="home page slider" or something along those lines. In concrete you are not that tied down to certain areas of your template being only controlled by one item. If that makes sense.

Not sure if that helps any.

Steph
MatthewSchenker replied on at Permalink Reply
Hello,
Thank you Steph and Fernandos for your input. I'm taking the time to read up on all the materials available for Concrete5 so I understand it all better.

From what I can tell, the grid themes (e.g., 960) might have some additional benefits, but even a non-grid theme in Concrete5 allows for greater variety.

I'm also glad to see that developing a new theme in Concrete5 is relatively straightforward. I never wanted to tackle that effort in Joomla!

Thanks again,
Matthew
katz515 replied on at Permalink Reply
katz515
I wrote a couple posts about CSS Framework before.

But I use Blueprint CSS Framework because this guy made a super-easy layout tool.

Boks - A Visual Grid Editor - TOKI WOKI.
http://toki-woki.net/p/Boks/

And these are the sites that I made with Blurprint and concrete5.


http://tanakateruyo.com/
http://www.jffla.org/
http://yokosonews.com/


With grid system, you can design the layout really quick.

In addition to the grid system, the GUI software helps.

I only spent about 2 hours to do the basic layout design and the total 10-20 hours to finalize the design as I run the site.
MatthewSchenker replied on at Permalink Reply
katz515,
Excellent work!

I'm really curious about all this. I'm still learning about Concrete5 (I have been using Joomla for my sites until I discovered Concrete5).

I'm very curious about using Blueprint framework (or other frameworks) in Concrete5. I'm wondering how to cart something from Blueprint into Concrete5...

Anyway, this is all very interesting to me.

Thanks,
Matt
nando replied on at Permalink Reply
nando
In my opinion, one of the best features of C5(and has many) is that is has no design constrains at all...anything that can be built in html and css can be built with C5...it is a designer/developer dream!