@define {
    $bordthickness: "1px";
    $bordstyle: "solid";
    $bordcol: "#fc0";
    $lightcol: "#fffffe";
}

.box {
    border: $bordthickness $bordstyle $bordcol;
    background-color: $lightcol;
}

Come to think of it, I suppose if we’re going to go that direction, we might as well just use php to generate our CSS files. I suppose this way would make it server-independent though.

I’ve read John Allsop’s post about web patterns, and it also interests me a little (along with microformats). This would be quite useful when creating your own style frameworks and starting points, but I’m not too sure about creating some kind of universal rule-set for everyone to follow. However, it would definitely be useful to have a global vocabulary to define the elements of a web design. I remember back in the day, when flash intros were all the go *shudder* we had a demo movie that showed all the animation techniques we used (eg. wavy text, splashing text, typewriter, tile-fade, etc.) so we had a way to discuss with clients what they were actually after, and also with other members of the team on the project.

As for Blueprint being applied commercially, I agree. I’ve already used it on a project, but by the time I was finished with it, I’d customised the number of columns and their widths, the container width, as well as some of the typography. (This tool made it a bit easier at first…). I didn’t practically use much of what it offered. Because it was just a small site, it didn’t really save me much time, although I guess the real test will come soon enough.

On a slightly related note, I would love to see a way in CSS to define your own color names as well. So I could do something like:

@color: borderColor=#ccc;

and then constantly use “borderColor” in my CSS rules:

.panel
{
border: 1px solid “borderColor”;
}

(with quote delimiters, since I imagine parsing arbritrarily defined color names like that could be perplexing)

The use of defined alias to some extend was proposed on the WHATWG list (IIRC) and is similar to John Allslop’s concept of design (web) patterns. Which is topic I have great deal of interest in.

However I can point to lots of in the wild cases daily in which we need to separate the id style rules and apply a layers class cascade of rules for a comment design element over multiple pages etc. Its a nice idea however. A simple starting point would be to get all the headers, footers, columns and content on the grid named the same from a universal context.

Blueprint has lots of good points as it brings together a lot of good ideas and techniques into one framework. Still I can’t see it being applied commerically with out some degree of personalisation.