Into the Fire with Foundation and The Big “D”rupal

Cheeky Monkey broke my Foundation cherry.  It’s been a pleasurable experience.

Coming from frameworks like Zen Grids (+ Drupal Theme) and Susy2 Grids, I can appreciate (and need) some major control over the grids.  I have to say though, the foundation does a bang-up job of letting you control the ‘big stuff’ with ease, and still being able to get down into the nitty gritty(see what I did there?) — and change what you like without too much fuss.

Drupal, Drupal he’s our man.

And then, oh yeah, there’s a Drupal theme for it!

Download the juicy theme here: ZURB Foundation

Already, all set up to go.  Install the theme, create a sub-theme, do your “npm install” and run grunt.  Magic, with the occasional unicorn.  The integration is great and pretty easy to use.

What about the others?

How does the grid setup compare to Zen or Susy, you ask?  Well, it doesn’t nor should it. You’re still comparing apples to apples, but it’s red delicious and granny smith.  It simply doesn’t matter, whatever you like best. I will say though, that Susy2 has some serious flexibility that allows you to do some crazy sh*t.  I’ve yet to explore the deep cavity of the foundation’s flexibility, but from what I’ve seen and worked with so far, it’s hawt, and so far pretty customizable.

Highly recommended though to watch Caleb Winter – “Getting Sassy with Foundation 4”.  — It’s a nice overview while getting deeper into its funky workings without making things too complicated.

So, where do I start with this bad boy?

Yeah, good question. I’ve no idea.. on your own big guy.  Kidding.

Start here:

http://foundation.zurb.com/docs/

You’ll see that it follows the same idea of a pre-baked boilerplate framework like bootstrap.  I like this better though.  It’s not so…. assuming, and customizing the pre-fab look is easier.

Check out youtube and the rest of the interwebs, there’s lots of good information, and it’s documented pretty nicely.

About that fire.

Knowing nothing about the foundation or how it integrates with Drupal was how I started.  But deep diving into it didn’t require a whole ton of time.  I was able to get up and running fairly quickly here at Cheeky Monkey (helps to have awesome people to work with).   The big guy always likes to challenge your technical cherry — and that’s awesome, because if you’re not learning something new, then you’re probably falling behind.

And on that bombshell!

So glad to come and work for the monkeys.  It’s been a great experience so far, and am always looking forward to new technology and methods of development that makes things simpler, more elegant, and less time-consuming!

– Signing off, Gene’s new monkey blood.