- CSS Frameworks have evolved. I know this, because I’ve used them. Yahoo also knows this, because they’ve updated their framework since this post and have notified me of it.

- The code I posted for how YUI Grids works is how it was. I copy and pasted it from their own website, and I am not going to take back what I said about it. However, I hear that it’s better now, and I am guessing the YUI Grids that you know and seem to love is this newer one, not the one this article is about.

- The comments do hold an awesome discussion on YUI Grids and frameworks in general, but many of them are from people discussing the current YUI Grids, not what the article is about. YUI Grids might be fine now, I do not know for sure. Funny you mention how you’re not from Yahoo!, because I have been in contact with them about this post in the past and they nicely asked (not required) that I put up a note similar to the one I have up now. No one from Yahoo! has ever asked that I disclaim my entire article, and I see no reason to do so, either.

I don’t think that your new disclaimer is sufficient (and no, I do NOT work for or have any affiliation with Yahoo). It’s not that Yahoo YUI Grids or CSS Frameworks have evolved and that they are better than when you first wrote this article. It’s that you made some mistaken claims about YUI Grids, misunderstood it’s full benefit and didn’t properly use some of your terms (as many of the comments here demonstrate – including one from the author of YUI Gridsd).

I think a better disclaimer would be that one should read the comments after (or instead of) reading my article because they shed a great deal of light on the purpose, benefit and advantage of using a CSS Framework in general and YUI Grids in particular. In short, fess up – YUI Grids is an extremely clever Framework that benefits many web developers.

Note: Please realize that this post was written in 2006, and a lot has changed since then–including YUI Grids. I am not too familiar with how the framework works now, but I am told it’s much better than it was when I wrote this article. Also note that I am not against all CSS frameworks and am even known to use them occasionally myself.

Again, thanks for reading and taking the time to participate here, and I hope you’ll continue to do so. You can always subscribe to the blog if this kind of stuff interests you and you’d like to continue in awesome discussion.

1) For the most part (ignoring semantic-ish tags like code and blockquote for the moment) HTML is for adding “structure” to the content it contains. That’s it. Structure is comprised of three things: a) Hierarchy, b) Linear Flow, and c) Grouping [with divs].

2) CSS is for enhancing this underlying structure with: 1) Positioning, aka “layout”–which is NOT the same thing as structure!, and 2) Styling / Presentation. You could add limited UI if you consider some of the a:hover techniques, but for the sake of brevity I’ll ignore those.

The point is, CSS is *for* adding layout & presentational elements, NOT for adding semantics (which is the domain of microformats and certain XML schemes). Though I agree, it’s nice when you can add in some semantic meaning as a bonus to whatever else you’re trying to accomplish with CSS.

Personally, I like to intermingle both approaches by adding supplementary ids and classes which describe the semantics of the content I’m working with.

YUI grids are a foundation for web applications, not simply a document style sheet. For instance, the four column grid you showed can be manipulated with javascript to display in any order by adding or removing the “first” classnames as needed.

Secondly, the grids provide a way to automate the layout, a strong requirement of web applications. This is especially true when pages are required to evolve in real time. If markup does not have structural divs and a predictable css rules, a developer might have to modify many interrelated styles just to add a single element asynchronously.

Using table code for layout is the very definition of mixing presentation with content and is not semantic, whereas using spans and divs for layout within markup is exactly what those tags are for! I might point out that your table code requires more markup to make it equivalent with the YUI grid including classes and don’t forget the cellpadding=0 etc… the grid is far better semantically.

In the end, I think that YUI grids make markup more readable from a developer’s prospective, more easily manipulated with javascript, easier to maintain, and at the same time, more cross-browser friendly and more accessible than using sparse html and stylitis… yes, too much style, not enough markup is often more cumbersome and difficult to maintain than a judicial use of divs.

I’ll concede that tructural markup should be kept to layout only (divs for rounded corners is javascript territory), but YUI does a good job of that. Check out the YUI sample application to see what you can do with an extra div tag or two.