What is a Web Design Framework?

First of all, I think we need to clarify a little what a framework is. For those who are just starting in Web development and are not familiar with the term, a framework is basically a pre-defined set of already developed tools that will make you programming job (and life in general) much easier.

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To be a bit more clear, suppose you are starting a web development project. More especifically, let’s say you are designing a new Joomla CMS template. If you were to start from scratch, you would have to carry out hundreds of tasks for the quality of your template to be good. This implies repetitive, tedious and quite complex programming that involves PHP, MySQL connection, HTML, CSS, Javascript libraries, debugging, cross-browser compatibility…well you get the picture!

A framework simplifies all this work by providing a well-organized and outlined set of libraries that you can use to carry out these tasks.

What is the Joomla Gantry Framework and why is it so good?

Perfect! Now that we defined what a framework really is, let me talk about what I think is the the most powerful, versatile and above all easy to use framework for developing a Joomla website: Gantry.

Gantry is a sophisticated framework that was built to specifically develop amazing Joomla CMS templates. In my humble opininon, Gantry contains all the “lessons learned” encountered during the development of many RocketTheme templates. The result was a fully developed and super-flexible single framework that is easy to configure, easy to expand, and powerful enough to handle whatever we throw at it.

These are some of the advantages of using the Joomla CMS Gantry Framework:

• Easy to use template management interface
• Several pre-designed features, such as text expander, IE6 alert message, mobile views, module positions, menu options, etc..
• Over 65 basic modules positions (and still growing).
• Table-less tools that reduce the amount of work you put in for designing those hedious tables and also improves your site’s SEO
• Support for mobile platforms
• Customizable settings that you can easily duplicate and modify

Watch the YouTube video on Gantry