Back in 2012, there was an influx of CSS frameworks being built using what were more modern responsive web design techniques at the time. I decided to try my hand at building my own CSS framework (using the LESS preprocessor) building on top of and combining the ideas of these other framework designers at the time.
Unlike other frameworks at the time which were more like full UI kits, Cardinal’s focus was on performance, scalability, and utility. Think "Utility-based CSS" long before Tailwind made it more approachable and fashionable. The entire framework weighs less than 20KB (minified and gzipped), and it provides a very light layer of base styles, components, and utilities that users can easily customize.
The framework gained a bit of traction and popularity on GitHub in its heyday, but eventually I decided my time was best spent elsewhere and I deprecated the framework.
I learned so much about:
Open-source community and software development
The inner workings of CSS
Good framework design
Systems thinking
Developer experience (DX)
Writing good documentation
2012
