I am developing a web application which is not an information conducting website like a blog, or news page or any other page where content matters. I am working on an application which is a tool and therefore will have multiple interface elements: data grids, buttons, input fields etc.
One of the designers told me that its a good practice to use ‘css grid framework’ to make my design based on some grid, however I have doubts because if I understand grids correctly, I then will be confounded to say 40px per column and if I have 2 x 15px buttons then I will have a hard time putting it all together within ‘cells’ of 40px…
In my mind grid is wasting lot of space and is good for big blocks of information but not for many little elements… am I correct?
Please let me know if its always a good practice to use grid or are there instances when actually good old pixel by pixel is simply better. If I am wrong please refer me to some good website which will explain how to use grids properly.
Take a look at http://grids.heroku.com/ its a simple tool that generates fixed or flexible grids. If you want to read up on how grids work, a simple and popular grid system is http://960.gs