Ask HN: Where are the Beautiful clean HTML/CSS templates?

I love Skeleton, used if for a long time. It still has a certain “X-factor” which makes it perfect with the right content and message.

Some time ago I started looking for a new framework, more up to date, at least. The website and GitHub repo for Skeleton hasn't been updated since 2014, so maybe I was missing out on the latest fashions? Doing more ambitious/insane web projects than happened earlier when less experienced, a bigger toolbox was needed. Of course, I had more requirements which were as important as possibly at odds with eachother. I still wanted a framework which felt as qualitative, effortless and pure as Skeleton did. No “api-breaking changes” or industrial-grade build-processes.

For me, the winner was Spectre.CSS[1], great work by Yan Zhu[2] . I'd like to pretend Spectre covers all of contemporary must-have elements, details and attractively styled controls for all future needs, because Spectre is great at teaching what is doable with pure CSS at the same time it makes me feel like a great designer, getting more done while doing even less.

[1] https://picturepan2.github.io/spectre/getting-started.html [2] [https://github.com/picturepan2/spectre]

Try https://bootstrapshuffle.com/

i recently sat down over a weekend and did the same after realizing that i should hammer out something i can use for myself - it dawned on me the work i thought i might be saving with frameworks was offset by the work i'd wind up doing to them - having to go through and cut out all the stuff i wound up not using, changing defaults to things i like etc.

i think a part of that was also realizing what drew me to frameworks initially was less about styling and more about the grid or flexbox etc scaffold - the most daunting part for me to this day. creating my own set of base templates helped me learn quite a bit about grids though, and now when stuff breaks i can tackle it with more confidence in where to look for the issue and how to go about fixing it.

that being said, i'm not anti-framework or anything - i relied on them alot as i learned CSS, and even now i still treat them like something akin to styleguides or catalogs of what's new/trending in webdesign

Spectre.CSS looks great. I have been using bulma with extensions. I might switch to Spectre.CSS. Thanks.

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