A Well-Designed Web App GUI Framework?

Question

As one of those people that never got around to properly learning design (or having no talent for it), the design seems to be the step always holding me back. It's not a problem for rich-clients, as the standard GUI toolkits provide some acceptable ways to design a good-looking interface, but the web is another story.

Question: Does anyone know of a high-quality framework for designing the interface of web applications? I'm thinking of standard snippets of html for an adequate set of controls (the standard html controls plus maybe navigations, lists, forms) and style sheets to give it an acceptable, modern look. If such a thing existed, it could even support themes in the way wordpress, drupal etc. allow it.

I know of the yahoo yui, but that's mostly javascript, though their grid css is a step in the right direction.

Solution 1

I realise this is an old thread but it still comes high up in Google searches so it's worth mentioning that Twitter have recently put out Twitter Bootstrap, a "toolkit for kickstarting CSS for websites, apps, and more" which looks fantastic! » https://github.com/twitter/bootstrap

Solution 2

Try the samples on ExtJs. I find them immensely useful in working out the UI. (trees, panels, modals, etc etc)

Solution 3

I'm not sure that what you're looking for exists in the way you're looking for it. However, I've had some luck with places like Open Source Web Design and Open Designs, which have some really slick templates that can be adapted to a web application so they at least don't look like crap.

There are also some commercial offerings, such as Gooey Templates.

Once you're getting closer to launch, you can contact a pro to fix the details for you, or simply build on what you've got.

Edited to add: You might also want to consider learning Blueprint CSS. I've found it helps guide my layouts and helps them look "right", without constraining me to the layout constructed for another purpose.

Solution 4

I'll suggest Google Web Toolkit if you're a Java developer. Examples

I'll also second the suggestion for Ext JS. It's got a vast array of really slick looking UI elements, incredibly well documented code, and a strong community.

Solution 5

We had the same problem so we made our own. CSS UI (http://css-ui.com/), open-source UI framework. The concept is to use pre-defined CSS classes to style any element.

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Comments

[avlnx]

Thank you for pointing this out! :)

[ftrotter]

Looking at this in 2012, I think this is really the only right answer given html 5 etc.