What I would like to see is an html/css/js framework like bootstrap or groundwork that is completely generic, with no styling at all; just a wireframe that lays everything out as it should. Then provide the ability to customize the look either manually or by some gui on the web. Otherwise you get a raft of "bootstrap" sites out there that all look the same unless a front-end dev goes through the painstaking process of overriding the default styles of the framework.
I use a CSS grid framework called Neat (built on top of a Sass mixin library called Bourbon) to do exactly this. Keeps my markup semantic, and is very easy to implement.
Plus, Bourbon has an amazing selection of Sass mixins and functions that make building stylesheets a joy.
I couldn't imagine developing withouteother anymore :)
This is exactly why I switched to Skeleton (http://www.getskeleton.com/). It's a few style sheets which are completely stripped down. It gives you a grid and a set of responsive media queries. Oh sure, there's some very basic styles for buttons and forms, but I ripped those out so it's just the essentials. Now, it just has what you need without bug all to get in your way.
Last I checked, Skeleton is just a grid system and doesn't attempt to be a complete framework (and is basically the old Foundation Grid isn't it? -- I think the guy that made Skeleton used to be a Zurbian) -- We can easily extract the grid system from Groundwork to be stand-alone and use it in the same way. If you'd like, create an issue on the Github page and I'll make it happen!
Agreed. I've mostly forgone using bootstrap-like foundations because of this issue. It's a lot easier to build something custom from scratch than to undo all the bootstrapped stuff. Maybe it gets you some pretty button styles off the starting block, but later when you really need to fine-tune your UX, it's hard to disentangle what you want from what's "in there". Plus, I find it a lot easier to create semantic markup when I can choose the class names and structure myself rather than using things like "col-256" which force you to create extraneous markup.
I've found that starting with the source .less files makes it easier to customize, and not include what you don't need... like using FontAwesome for the icons. I do find that bootstrap is a bit too prescriptive in terms of it's offerings, and hope that it can grow a bit. I like where it is a lot better than jQueryUI for example, but find that the more sites that use it with minimal changes, the more you notice it.
I agree with this -- I aimed at making Groundwork as close to this as possible. Even the button styles (colors, radius, borders, etc.) are all easily customized in the _variables.scss file. I think there's more we can do to make it even more generic of coarse, I encourage you to create issues on the Github page if you find components have too much stylistic direction. :)
