

Topcoat – CSS for clean and fast web apps - instakill
http://topcoat.io/

======
eggbrain
I'm finding it hard to think up ways that this differentiates itself enough
from Foundation or Bootstrap to be useful -- and your website isn't providing
me any reason why as well.

Compare to <http://twitter.github.io/bootstrap/> and
<http://foundation.zurb.com/>, which list some benefits right on the page --
you need people to instantly understand why they should use your framework
over another css framework.

Also, make sure your demo pages represent responsiveness well -- I resized my
browser on your mobile demo page and the tab bar ended up becoming nothingness
-- perhaps some min-widths are needed?

~~~
patrickaljord
> and your website isn't providing me any reason why as well.

Looks like it's an Adobe project.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Check out the contribution license for a chuckle:

<http://topcoat.io/dev/topcoat-cla.html>

~~~
mindcrime
Why a chuckle? I like that they at least let you fill out the CLA online. The
ASF still requires contributors to fax in a paper form (or they did last time
I checked, which was when I did mine, which was, now that I think about it,
some time ago, so maybe this long rambling comment is actually pointless after
all...)

Anyway, the point is, having an online form to submit a CLA seems like a
positive step to me, if you're going to require CLAs at all. And a CLA that
simply grants a perpetual, worldwide, irrevockable license to the content, as
opposed to asking for a _transfer_ of copyright ownership, doesn't seem to
onerous to me. And for an Open Source project with commercial backing it is
pretty commonplace.

That said, we are an Open Source startup, and we don't (currently) plan to ask
for a CLA from outside contributors, but just something basically saying "I
license my contribution under the Apache License v2".

~~~
anonfunction
It's using bootstrap

~~~
acoyfellow
This should speak volumes about how ready the framework really is..

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paulirish
One of topcoat's goals is to be highly performant CSS (especially on mobile,
it's hard to deliver fast UI). To this end they're using the Chromium
Telemetry project to benchmark the performance of their CSS continually.
Basically CSS Performance Regression Testing.

See <http://bench.topcoat.io/> and
[http://bench.topcoat.io/v2/view/results?date=30&](http://bench.topcoat.io/v2/view/results?date=30&);
(metrics for time spent in recalc styles, layout, paint, composite layers)

~~~
notjustanymike
See that's the kind of sentence that should be on the homepage!

~~~
seferphier
exactly.

Knowing that there are more popular alternatives around, the question that
everyone has is: why should i use this? This value prop is something that
interests me greatly.

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mratzloff
I realize we're all in our early 20s with 20/15 vision, but this trend of
microscopic fonts is really unfriendly to the old guys who sometimes want to
read things on the web.

~~~
robotmay
Hell I'm 25 and struggled with some of those font sizes. I probably do need to
get my prescription altered, however.

~~~
skcin7
I'm 25 and I can read it fine but I agree it needs to be bigger. 14px is a
good starting size IMO for fonts.

~~~
ExpiredLink
Firefox Users:

Options / Content / Fonts & Colors / Advanced ... / Minimal font size

(some pages don't like this)

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marknutter
I would personally like to see a CSS framework that has absolutely _zero_
opinions about design. Meaning, radio buttons are actually the standard html5
radio buttons, but perhaps with titles handled in a unified way that works
across all browsers. Form elements are given proper layout CSS that solves a
lot of common issues across all browsers but no additional styling is added.
Etc. I don't want my site to look like yet another bootstrap site (YABS) and
overriding all of bootstrap/foundations/whatever's styles is a huge PITA. I
usually just end up rolling everything from scratch for sites where I want
full control over the design.

edit: I'll post this as an edit since there are multiple responses referring
to <http://www.getskeleton.com>. Skeleton is similar to what I'm asking for
but it seems to have stopped short. I would love to see unstyled carousels,
alerts, modals, sticky headers, images with inline comments, etc. Basically,
all the really nice stuff you get in Bootstrap and Foundation but without any
of the styling.

~~~
JangoSteve
I think this is exactly what Skeleton tries to be.

<http://www.getskeleton.com/>

I will say though that Foundation is much easier to customize styles for than
Bootstrap, which is one of the primary reasons we now use Bootstrap for
internal apps or side projects which we don't intend to implement a custom
design, but Foundation for all sites which we plan on designing.

~~~
akurilin
One thing to keep in mind is that Skeleton has not seen a single commit in the
past year, so it's not clear if the framework is going to be supported long-
term. It's probably better as a blueprint for one's own homebrew minimalistic
CSS framework.

~~~
nobodysfool
So a framework needs to update every 6 months just because that would make you
feel better about it?

Also, your statement is factually incorrect. There was a single commit in the
past year. If you had said that next month, you might have been correct.

The author is on twitter...

~~~
akurilin
1) Nitpick about 11 months vs 12 months. Are you adding any value to the
conversation? 2) The author being on Twitter doesn't affect the 31 outstanding
pull requests and the 52 issues filed against the GitHub repository. Again,
I'm not clear what you're getting at.

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Fauntleroy
This looks like a great start, but there are some missing parts and serious
issues with the typography. In many places the text size is just too small,
while the typeface they're using here is too light for display. The link text
under Michael Peterson is a good example of the problem:
<http://topcoat.io/topcoat/doc/mobile.html#m-well>

~~~
brianleroux
We're working on it! Pls file issues <http://github.com/topcoat/topcoat> and
we'll get on em. =)

~~~
packetslave
If you type 'pls' because it's shorter than 'please', then I'll type 'no'
because it's shorter than 'yes'

~~~
brianleroux
LULZ UR SO CLEVAR!

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philfreo
Your "slide switch", "toggle buttons", "tabs", etc all suffer from the same
big problem: hard to tell which one is selected (especially if there's 1 "on",
1 "off").

~~~
xixixao
Those don't seem to be implemented yet.

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joshcrowder
I like the idea of this project we do need more variety rather than bootstrap
bootstrap bootstrap. However why is the font size so small its horrendously
difficult to read.

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rmrfrmrf
What is this, a webapp for ants?!

~~~
KingMob
It has to be at least three times as styled!

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effectivestack
I've already picked this up for a side project of mine. So far, it's been a
pleasure working with the UI toolkit. I'm seriously looking forward for 1.0
release of the Desktop flavor.

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macspoofing
It looks very nice, but it doesn't bode well when the 'mobile' section has
atrociously slow scroll speed and completely breaks.

~~~
dwabyick
This is a known/filed issue. Current work in progress to generate a new mobile
friendly guide. There's a lot of components on that page for mobile.

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Ixiaus
Is it just me, or is the proliferation of CSS frameworks and JS
frameworks/libs redundant now?

~~~
leetrout
Came here to say it.

Just saw in the job posting for Amicus:

"Open source projects, including our own in house, soon to be open sourced,
real time Model View Presenter javascript framework with bi-directional data
binding"

Are the existing libs so bad everyone has to reinvent the wheel constantly?

~~~
coderzach
Amicus engineer here. It's actually built on top of Backbone, in a similar
vein as Airbnb's rendr. It allows our front-end to be pre-rendered on the
server, and sent to the client as static html, as well as some other cool
stuff. > Are the existing libs so bad everyone has to reinvent the wheel
constantly?

To actually answer your question: yes. Existing libs for building large scale
apps are in a transition period from server-side only apps to something more
akin to native apps, and no one has come up with a great way to do it yet.

Honestly I hope people keep "reinventing the wheel". Web Development isn't in
a place where we can just accept the state of the art and call it a day.

~~~
cuttooth
Yeah, it makes a lot of sense to never have any sort of stable, widely-
accepted solution built over a long period of time. Let's just keep having a
new artisanal web framework of the week.

Web developers are an utter fucking embarrassment and shit like this is
exactly why.

~~~
joshuacc
You may want to read the HN guidelines:
<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

In particular:

Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation.

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g.
"That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 +
1 is 2, not 3."

~~~
cuttooth
I didn't call anyone a name, and I wouldn't be ashamed to say it face-to-face
because it is in fact what I think. I'm tired of the JS framework of the week
being posted on here in some vague attempt to become the cool new thing on the
block. What happened to Backbone? Not cool any more because it's remotely
stable? No, of course not, because developers need to have their bespoke
framework of the week.

~~~
gnaritas
You called web developers and utter embarrassment, that is name calling, and
if you said that face to face you might get punched.

~~~
cuttooth
They are an embarrassment and I strongly doubt that I'd be punched.

~~~
nickbyfleet
Please try to remember that this is not Reddit.

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mikehc
I know all of you use Linux and OSX, but this renders horrible in Windows (IE
and Chrome).

~~~
riquito
Worry not, it renders horribly on Linux too (the fonts for sure) (or maybe our
taste and the author's are very different)

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Hovertruck
Can we maybe get a more useful title for this submission?

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jstanley
This looks really nice! If I hadn't already got a designer for my current
project (from <http://analoghq.com/> mentioned here last week, no less!) I
would definitely be using this.

EDIT: That's not to say this is a replacement for highly-skilled designers,
more that it's an easy way to get a passable interface in the absence of any
design skill :)

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volaski
why this instead of bootstrap?

~~~
alan_cx
Wonderful.

If there is a thread about bootstrap, some one posts "why must everything be
bootstrap?" Get a thread about a bootstrap alternative and...... bingo!!!!

(Not having a go at you personally, Im sure your question was genuine. Just
making general observation of the irony)

~~~
volaski
yes it was a genuine question. i guess i should have phrased it differently. I
just wanted to know the difference (or benefit of this over bootstrap). I mean
if a wheel is being re-invented, there's gotta be a reason behind it. (I guess
"because I can" could be an answer, but I was looking for some good answer)

~~~
JoeKM
My problem with your question is the evergrowing lack of critical thinking on
HN. I think even PG has eluded to it.

What's the difference from Bootstrap? Why don't you view its source? Read
through the framework's documentation? For one the default styling is
significantly different than Bootstrap.

The one thing I fondly miss about Slashdot is people would liberally tell you
to RTFM when you asked something obvious that could have been answered by
reading the article posted.

~~~
gnaritas
Then go back to slashdot and be rude there.

~~~
JoeKM
Suggesting someone to apply critical thinking is anything but. Your
confrontational attitude is though. Another thing becoming of HN.

~~~
seferphier
you are being rude in the first place. You could have framed your comment
better. quit HN if this community is disturbing you so much.

I disagree with your original comment. Yes, we can read the source. Yes, we
can analyze it ourselves. But time is limited to all of us. The product should
state exactly how it is different with the competition and why we should pick
it. This is similar to how pg asks startups to describe themselves in one
simple sentence. You don't tell pg that he lacks critical thinking for not
reading my website.

Stating how you are different gives the customers focus. If you state that you
are different because of X then you can go into the code and look at X
particularly.

------
vvpan
The buttons remind me of 90s operating systems.

~~~
marshray
One day the chiseled-3D look is going to come back as retro chic and make all
our sites look like The New Yorker with smushed Skittles.

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jamesbrennan
I find it kind of odd and off putting that Adobe makes you sign something to
contribute to the project. I think the only proper way to do switches is by
using checkboxes and CSS transformations [0] - their javascript solution is
not desirable.

[0] <http://www.larentis.eu/switch/>

~~~
mindcrime
_I find it kind of odd and off putting that Adobe makes you sign something to
contribute to the project._

That's pretty common in larger projects, and/or projects that have a
commercial entity backing them. And there are some very good reasons for it.
It helps keep the provenance and legality of the code in more of a known
state, and could be important in a SCO v. IBM type case. Also, if re-licensing
ever becomes desirable down the road, it's a hell of a lot easier if at least
one entity or person has permission to release the entire code base under an
arbitrary license. Take the Linux kernel, where it would be effectively
impossible to relicense even if Linus wanted to, since the copyright ownership
is spread out among gosh knows how many people, some of who nobody knows how
to contact, and some of whom might not even be alive for all we know.

The FSF, ASF and other big open source organizations also typically require a
CLA or a copyright assignment of some sort as well. So at least this isn't
Adobe just being evil or anything. That's not to say whether they are or
aren't evil, just saying that the CLA thing, in and of itself, isn't
necessarily a bad thing.

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milos_cohagen
I really get frustrated when I land on a page, and I can't hit space bar to
page down.

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ww520
May be just my browser setting but the fonts rendered in Firefox (Win64) look
really bad, thin and pixelized; looked like anit-alias has been turned off.

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napolux
One question... Why? It's missing features Bootstrap as since version 1.0.

Adobe should focus on something like not trashing Fireworks.

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zallarak
Thanks a lot for creating this. We need some diversity and options in this
realm!

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dgreensp
Nice work. A clean, attractive look.

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modarts
Looks very Asana-like

