Nathan Smith talks about the 960 Grid System CSS “framework” (I say in quotes, since that word seems divisive when applied to CSS) he recently released. It all looks very impressive to me, and I’m quite tempted to use it over Blueprint. Blueprint has changed several things since the work Nathan, Christian, and I did at the Lawrence Journal-World, and much of it is not necessarily to my liking (that’s not to say it’s bad — just not now I want it). Nathan’s 960 is a bit closer to what I want, grid-wise (and is a bit lighter weight, as it doesn’t really bother with typography). I’ll definitely be giving it a closer look in the near future.
001 // Matt Stanley // 03.27.2008 // 3:23 PM
I’m curious about Smith’s application of the 10px outer gutters. While that follows hard-and-fast his rule of having both inner and outer gutters, it seems, based on his examples including the layout of 960.gs itself, to actually limit the layout’s width to 940px.
It’s been my understanding that the design cognoscenti consider 960px the maximum usable (not just visible) width for a centered, fixed-width layout, i.e., it still left a smidge of safety between the layout and the browser chrome (Khoi Vin’s Yeeaahh comp being one example). Have I been reading things wrong, and 940px is the new go-to, not 960?