Thank you for showing interest. I am currently working on my own framework or base for my future websites but thats a discussion for another topic. And i must say, i dont make websites for clients, i make them for myself (and users, of course) and dont want to use cms. Now, when i have started, i want to include all the latest and newest website creating ideas, technologies and trends in my own framework. But since i am not active in web design community, i probably dont have the slightest clue what is new and innovative nowadays and where the design trend will lead us in near future. Maybe you guys can help me out and point me to things you feel is very important to create future proof websites (even if there is no such thing) and what to look for when it comes to innovation. Obviously the responsive grid is very important for handling exploding number of different devices that view websites every day. I just found a thing called Foundation and its overwhelming at first glance but i have a feeling it will be a keeper. Bootstrap is, as i understand, a kind of lightweight version of that? I think i have been using bootstrap while modifying templates to match my needs. jQuery is another one that is must-have in websites today. I also have been thinking about includin jQuery UI and of course, there are a lot of plugins that i can add when the functionality is needed in future projects. Ajax is something that is already widly used but its sometimes also overused. As i have learned making websites with it, it can be good or bad depending on situation but certanly very useful for website functionality it suits for. Font Awesome is another one that i have been using lately and feel that its very useful for making a website full of beautiful icons. SCEditor is something i have used in past and i like its style and design. I wonder if there is anything i can replace it with that is more mobile friendly because, as i understand, sceditor is terrible for that. SASS is something i also just found but it seems to be included in Foundation? Would be very useful for writing conditional design and changing colors of the whole theme. I wonder if there is a website for free grid layouts that use Foundation? All ideas, thoughts and discussions are welcome! Thank you.
Well you can just take what you need from Bootstrap so you can keep it pretty light. Bootstrap 3 is mobile first so it's pretty good for developing RWD. There are many plugins and components that come with Bootstrap so you can cover most requirements.
My advice is ignore frameworks, they are nothing more than crutches for the inept, a complete waste of bandwidth and time, and a lot of them generally just piss all over any website they are used on. Many of them are the opposite of accessibility (the entire reason to be doing responsive layout) or even the entire point of using HTML/CSS in the first place. Bootstrap is just bloated half-assed bull -- being tied to the train wreck of ineptitude known as HTML 5 that should go without saying, but it's presentational use of classes results in pages being anywhere from two to ten times the markup and/or CSS they should be using. jQuery is REALLY garbage. I've never seen a site made more useful by it's inclusion, and on the whole anything done with it is an inaccessible fat bloated slow train wreck. Generally what people do with jQuery falls into two categories; either stuff that has no damned business on a website in the first place, or things that could be coded using less javascript WITHOUT it... and yet people say it makes things 'easier' or 'faster' to develop? <carlin>BULLSHIT!</carlin>. Your assessment of AJAX is spot on... I think the problem most people have when they use it is failing to remember the unwritten rule of writing good javascript -- you should make the site work WITHOUT scripting FIRST!!! Then you enhance it with scripting. A great example of AJAX done right is things like the quick reply on a forums, where you have a scripting off fallback of a normal form and page-load. A great example of AJAX done wrong is people using it to load content tab-style like how people used to use iFrames. There's this noodle-doodle idea running through people's heads that "pageloads are evil" or something. MAYBE if people would stop using 100k of markup for every 10k of plaintext, hundreds if not thousands of K of CSS and Scripting, leveraged caching models and practiced separation of presentation from content, they wouldn't be diving for throwing more code at the problem. ... and in many ways that's what's REALLY wrong -- when someone says throwing more code at something can make it faster or easier, your common sense should start tingling. (Listen to your inner Deadpool... did someone say Chimichangas?) I WANT to like Font Awesome, even if it was ALLEGEDLY built for bootstrap... I've often thought fonts would be a more efficient way to deploy vector images, to the point I've even played with it myself... but like webfonts in general the resulting filesizes are by themselves as big (the OTF/TTF) or twice as big (the SVG) as I'd allow an entire TEMPLATE for a page to be -- and I'm talking HTML+CSS+SCRIPTS+IMAGES. On top of the lack of graceful degradation and inconsistent rendering across browsers means that -- much like webfonts -- I wouldn't be wasting time putting them on a website... and why most sites that use them are an accessibility mess, coding mess, and on the whole do NOT make life any better for people visiting the sites in question. Haven't heard of SCEditor -- as a WYSIWYG my gut reaction is to piss on it from orbit; but for things like forum entry posts and user generated content they are for all intents and purposes a necessary evil. I used to like FCKEditor for that as it USED to be lean, but ever since it was renamed to... whatever the blue blazes they call it now... It's been a fat bloated mess. TinyMCE was always buggy ****, and it's not even tiny anymore ... so I'll have to give SCEditor a look as I've been looking for a new solution on that front as it's one of the few things I'm NOT willing to put the time into implementing.... oh wait, no, it's a fat bloated steaming pile too because it relies on that half-wit bloated crap known as jQuery... nevermind. SASS, much like OOCSS and a host of other garbage people are using for CSS is some of the dumbest halfwit bull I've EVER seen in web development. At best it's a sleazy shortcut, at worst it makes MORE work, not less. Generally speaking if dicking around with CSS in this manner provides you with any measurable benefits, you don't know enough CSS to be making websites and are making your code such a needlessly convoluted mess, it'll be a miracle you even have visitors in the first place! But to put all that in perspective, I practice code limits for site designs -- the template, not counting content for one of my sites, should have a code to content ratio in the markup of 2:1 or less, ideally come in around 72k and not exceed 144k for the HTML + CSS + SCRIPTS + IMAGES, and ideally come in somewhere between 12 and 24 files. If you cannot pull that off, you are probably doing something wrong like bloating down your page with gee ain't it neat bullshit that doesn't belong on your website and just gets in the way of visitors actually getting to what's important -- THE CONTENT!!! Naturally the PSD jockeys who have the giant brass monkey balls to call themselves "designers" when they don't know enough about HTML, CSS, emissive colourspace or accessibility to be designing jack ***, the scripttards who's answer to every problem is "use jQuery" and who caares if they're wasting megabytes of bandwidth on firstload for NOTHING and draining mobile devices batteries dry, and the dipshits who actually see merit in HTML 5 as a markup specification will all take offense to what I just said. GOOD! Maybe it will give these ignorant inept fools a wakeup call. Though that would actually involve effort -- and given most of the people in the industry these days are sleazeball scam artists sleazing together off the shelf parts any old way and preying on the ignorance of people who don't know any better -- well, people will continue to have their craniums wedged so far up 1997's rectum it will take an orthodontist to handle the extraction. See HTML 5 -- all the cool stuff people call HTML 5 isn't, while apart from one or two minor bits like MANIFEST in terms of markup it's pointless redundant bloat and dialing coding practices back to the worst of the pre-STRICT era, and on the whole pitching most of the progress of the past fifteen years in the trash. In many ways it's just the W3C shrugging it's shoulders and going "Oh well, fine... forget STRICT and just sleaze things out any old way like you've been doing." Part of why I laugh when people call HTML 5 "the future" -- REALLY? Looks like 1997 style HTML 3.2 to me.
Oh, there's actually a third category of crap people use jQuery for -- and that's to do CSS' job. A LOT of the stuff people vomit up with jQuery could be done in a fraction a code in CSS or more efficiently from a CPU/Power consumption point of view. Hell, all that .fadeIn, .slideIn and other animooted bull people cream their panties for falls under all three categories of "jQuery for nothing".