The 1140 CSS Grid sign from http://cssgrid.net
Death, no, not really. I’m being slightly over-dramatic, the grid system was merely put into retirement… This post is my tribute to the framework and the work that went into it.
Odd things happen when you have meetings in open cubicle spaces. Things like shoulder-surfing someone at another cube who is looking at responsive frameworks and different grid systems. I currently use base as a responsive starting point (yes, it has a bug or three, and is extremely basic out of the box), but my designer friends are starting to strike out on their own learning what will work and what will not for our new and upcoming projects. As she was surfing I couldn’t help but notice the giant words on her screen stating “1140px CSS Grid Retired”.
A moment of reminiscence took me back to Google I/O ’11, where as a sandbox developer on the 2nd floor of Moscone West I received an emergency phone call telling me that I needed to get a press release site put together in a couple of hours… and it had to work on whatever device the user was using to view the release. I grabbed my laptop and sat on the floor coding trying to get done before Jane’s Addiction rocked the house for the after-hours party. I had heard of the 1140px CSS Grid and so I decided to give it a whirl. I grabbed it and hastily put together the site (including a sidebar with a gallery and press kit download section that would collapse under the press release when viewed on a phone). The system was terrific, and worked perfectly for what I needed.
After that experience I always carried the 1140px CSS Grid system in my web-toolbox for some quick grid-like-fixery where a fluid site would be needed. In fact I’ve mentioned the 1140px CSS Grid before in posts, and I think it even snuck into one of my books.
So why was the 1140px CSS Grid retired? Well, as Andy Taylor explains on the 1140px CSS Grid blog post, it was always an experiment, RWD has come a long way since the inception of the project, and it was desktop-down utility. I agree with what Andy has done in retiring the project, and I would like to express my thanks for the experience it gave me.
