

Ask HN: Where are all of the CSS Themes? - evlapix

It seems like before anybody ever started making CSS Templates, they should have had a strong foundation of CSS Themes. Stylesheets that reset the browser defaults, then style all of the default elements to be a better browser default. I've been using Drupal's "default.css"(?) just so that development is easier on the eyes. Does anything like this exist?<p>This alone would really help get my MVP up and running a lot quicker. jQueryUI only handles so much (as it should).
======
Terretta
I think you're looking for this:

[http://devkick.com/lab/tripoli/sample.php?base=base&visu...](http://devkick.com/lab/tripoli/sample.php?base=base&visual=visual&type=type)

<http://devkick.com/lab/tripoli/>

It's not just a reset, it's an attempt to be a "better browser default".

Another sample, applied to an existing W3C page:
[http://devkick.com/lab/tripoli/selectors.php?base=base&v...](http://devkick.com/lab/tripoli/selectors.php?base=base&visual=visual&type=type)

~~~
evlapix
Excellent! This is perfect for what I need now. Thanks Terretta.

------
mrtom
For the first half of that (resetting the browser defaults) I use Yahoos
reset.css (<http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/reset/>), which works a charm.

~~~
evlapix
Yeah, I have used that before too. It does a great job of removing the browser
defaults.

What I dislike, is that it forces me to have to start from scratch (reset.css
scratch) in order to make a project at all readable/usable.

~~~
mikeleeorg
Though it means adding a bit more code to each page, YUI has this Base CSS
component that is meant to rebuild some of the native formatting Reset CSS
removes: <http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/base/>

~~~
evlapix
I remember coming across this in the past. This is very similar to what I want
to find, only.. I want to push the "Base" much further.

~~~
mikeleeorg
YUI is on GitHub. I'm sure they'd love any help & suggestions to their Base
component. <http://github.com/yui/yui3>

------
evlapix
It seems that there is no readily available solution. So if I were to create
one, it would go something like this:

href="theme-base-renegade.css"

theme-base-renegade would style all of the default markup in its own styleish
little way. Whatever that may be: Super padded with big fonts and so on, or
incredibly tiny with minimal line-height, font-size, etc..

href="theme-color-grayhaze.css"

theme-color-darkness would specifically color the default markup. Things like
th, tr, td, dl, dt dd, etc, would have be darker/brighter than others with
their respective font-colors and such to complement the element background-
colors.

Since both stylesheets would be styling the default markup - not specific to
styles or id's - the two stylesheets could be swappable with other like type
themes components and not interfere with one another.

After that.. it's CSS! You could overwrite any one of the many styles used to
create that theme. Plus, with all of the tools we have to debug, overriding
otherwise desirable styles in order to apply specific/custom ones would be
much more convenient.

------
cmelbye
Blueprin CSS framework does a good job of this.

------
grayrest
Sass has plugins that cover most of the CSS "frameworks" but to my knowledge
doesn't have a lot of fully developed themes. The advantage to using a
preprocessor is that you can apply the built in styles to the classes/ids of
your choice instead of having to use the same ones the css framework uses.

