As you might have heard, I recently launched a site for the templates that I created to use in my personal and professional projects. For lack of a better name, and because the numerals made for a nice logo, I’ve decided to simply refer to it as the 960 Grid System. It’s funny, because even though all I did was post a single tweet about it before going to bed Sunday night, viral word of mouth kicked in, and I’m already getting inquiring emails. I should note that the 180 KB download size isn't for the CSS framework alone. That download bundle is for all the files: printable sketch sheets, design templates for Fireworks, Photoshop, OmniGraffle and Vision + the CSS and HTML. The 960.css file itself is only 3.6 KB when compressed. First of all, I made this for myself, to scratch an design itch. Not everyone will like it, and I'm okay with that. There's an old saying: “You can please everyone some of the time, and some people all of the time.” I am not trying to accomplish either. I am simply sharing the grid dimensions that I have found myself gravitating towards over the past year or so. If others can benefit from that, then all the better. That being said, read on. Browsers I built the code in my grid system to accomodate all A-Grade browsers, as determined by Yahoo. At the time of this writing, that chart looks like… A-Grade Browser Chart Note that IE5.x is nowhere to be found. That's for good reason. There's not enough market share for it to be important to Yahoo. Not only that, but even Microsoft has discontinued support for it. If you're stuck in a position where you're still having to code for that ancient browser, the best suggestion I have is to go peruse Authentic Jobs and find better employment. Background I first became interested in grid design via reading articles by Khoi Vinh and Mark Boulton. Initially, I must admit that I didn't fully grasp the concept. But, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this time-tested practice from printing works well on the web. Like it or not, web pages essentially revolve around boxy shapes. Inevitably, these rectangles have to come together in some way or another to form a design. As long as we're using shapes consisting of right angles, we might as well make some logical sense of it all. Some time after the intial work of Khoi and Mark, I happened upon an article by Cameron Moll, heralding a width of nine-hundred and sixty pixels as the optimal size for design. Basically, 1024×768 is the new 800×600, and 960 makes for a good magic number to utilize the wider canvas on which we paint. After that seminal article, I have been basically designing on some subdivided variant of 960 pixels ever since. Last spring (2007), I found my groove, so to speak. It happened when I began to redesign my personal site. It's still in the works, but here's a sneak peek. As you can see, I'm eating my own dog food, as the future version of my site will use a 16 column grid.