

Helium – Like Bootstrap, but in 30kb - johnx123-up
https://github.com/cbrauckmuller/helium

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jschuur
Pro tip: Link your demo from the top of your readme file, especially when
you're handing out the Github URL.

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size0618
I'm not able to find the demo? Did you find it in the readme file?

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cbrauckmuller
Hey guys, I'm Chris, the developer of Helium. We were pretty surprised by the
amount of attention the project is receiving, and unfortunately don't have a
live demo of the base project up right now. However as an example of what it
can do, you can check out our first live project built with Helium over at
<https://fundrise.com>

~~~
size0618
No worries. Thanks for replying back with a link to a working example. It's
the first thing I like to see when looking at something like this.

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kiwidrew
Any links to examples? The main page shows the HTML code but not what the
resulting styles look like...

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johnx123-up
<https://fundrise.com/> found via <http://dribbble.com/shots/908088-New-
Fundrise-Homepage>

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Toshio
I presume the main style sheet at fundrise.com [1] could have been called
helium.css to give you guys at least a minimum amount of credit.

[1] [https://s3.amazonaws.com/fundrise-content/css/master-
respons...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/fundrise-content/css/master-
responsive.css)

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CornishPasty
> New homepage for <http://fundrise.com> launched today. It's fully responsive
> and built with Helium (<http://github.com/cbrauckmuller/helium>), our in-
> house responsive framework.

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btipling
Very cool, but I don't see file size as a significant factor when making a
decision about what library to use. With SPDY, fast pipes & 4G, minification
etc, worrying about super tiny file sizes is becoming a legacy issue.

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nwh
In the US. In other countries, not so much.

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unicornporn
Well, I'm in Sweden on a gigabit connection right now. Quite a few countries
have good cable and cell infrastructures. So, "other countries" might
generalizing.

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nakkiel
I was about to say the same thing. I live in Thailand and haven't had any
issue with slow websites (besides the usual borked connection every now and
then). I've worked for two different companies here that rely heavily on the
cloud for extremely operations and both selling cloud-based software (both are
SMEs are targeting SMEs).

Now, I don't even think the overall quality of internet connections is that
great in the US and I'd say most European countries do a better job overall
(less disparities inside individual countries, _not_ among all European
countries).

And finally: [http://www.techpark.net/2010/04/15/broadband-internet-
speeds...](http://www.techpark.net/2010/04/15/broadband-internet-
speeds-2009-2010-the-top-10-countries/)

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Foomandoonian
I've uploaded a screenshot for anyone who just wants a peek:
<http://decodering.com/post/41361083824/helium>

(I tweaked the padding too.)

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Kudos
> The compiled default CSS file weighs in at a comparatively tiny 30k, versus
> approximately 100k for Bootstrap and almost 200k for Foundation.

At first I was sceptical that this was even close to a fair comparison,
however even after stripping Bootstrap back to comparable functionality its
CSS still weighs in at 68KB.

I will be watching this project with interest, but I think it probably needs a
lot more use before all the edge case bugs (that Bootstrap has probably
already dealt with) get ironed out.

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johnx123-up
I'm not the original author. I don't know how you checked that. But...

1\.
[https://github.com/cbrauckmuller/helium/blob/master/css/mast...](https://github.com/cbrauckmuller/helium/blob/master/css/master.css)
41kb (with whitespace)

2\. YUI Minified 33kb

3\. Minfied + gzip 5.8kb

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waxjar
He stripped Bootstrap of the functionality not included in Helium and
compressed that. The README most likely lists the compressed version of the
full Bootstrap library.

5.8kb is impressive, though.

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ricardobeat
Skeleton [1] is a nice lightweight alternative too, with very discreet default
styles.

[1] <http://www.getskeleton.com>

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ksec
Are there like many of these floating around? It seems like We get a "Like
Bootstrap" every week or so. Ink,

<http://ink.sapo.pt/index.php>

Didn't even got to frontpage two weeks ago. And possibly many others.

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monsterix
Very interesting stuff. I have been working on my own project this way from
scratch too. Gotten so far as under 100kb with all images [raw data URIs]
combined so far.

Will give this project a close look in the weekend.

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ulisesrmzroche
What's the selector count and how does it tackle specificity?

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shocks
Very interesting.

An example site would be excellent.

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jrwoodruff
I might just be missing it, but is this published under an open source
license? I didn't see it noted anywhere...

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QuantumGuy
I could really see myself using this soon for a project I am working on. Glad
someone made this.

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dreen
sounds cool, needs more demos

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init0
Add a demo plz!

