An UI Framework for (the front-end) of Websites

There are many nice User Interface Frameworks for the Web. Some of the are made for Java (and they do a pretty good job of deuglifying it - at least for the user) but most of them can be used for every architecture, because they base solely on JavaScript (and / or JavaScript Frameworks like JQuery, MooTools, etc.) and CSS. Here's a list of a few of them.

• Echo (Java Only)
• YUI (The best Yahoo has come up with. Period.)
• Mocha (Based Upon MooTools)
• Vaadin (This one looks pretty, pretty sexy - the best Java UI there was, is, and ever will be)
• jQuery UI (I have a feeling you know this one ...)

While those Libraries are all very good and contain lots of widgets and other nice things - they are also big, hard to (learn to) use and did I say big? They are huge!

If you're designing a CMS backend or an enterprise intranet solution you just have to use one of them. But if you're "just" designing a "mid-range" website and you just like to provide a little more User Experience, those framworks / libraries are just overkill.

Now, whats the first thing you need if you start to build a website (from scratch)? A nice layout. Now there are a few options... you could spend some time building a CSS based cross-browser layout, you could just slam in a table or you could use a CSS framework. There are some very interesting, grid based CSS Frameworks. My favourite is blueprint - there are others, just do a google for "css frameworks".

Now long story short - i slammed together a little, let's say, website template, or website starter kit. This template (or kit) contains my micro ui widgets for jquery and a modified blueprint css framework.

Check a demo out here.

Now keep in mind: This is a work in progress and I'm creating this template for my own use (as well as for anyone's who likes it).

Download the package here.

Now run along and create a beautiful website!