Forums / Cotonti / Development / Poll: Default theme requirements

The default theme for Cotonti is a big point of discussion. Nemesis doesn't really appeal to many people, and the code is a mess. This is why we want to replace it with something that looks good and is easy to maintain and modify. My question is, how do you think it should be built? A common practice in webdevelopment is to use a CSS grid framework, such as CSSgrid.net or 960.gs, or even a full HTML/CSS/JS framework such as Bootstrap. It could be a good thing to use one of those frameworks to aid in theme development, but I would like to know how the community feels about that before we just plainly start developing.

A purely semantic and basic theme will have a minimalistic codebase and a minimum of IDs and classes. This means it will perform very well, but it's also not very easy for beginners to modify because modifying it will mean having to add wrapper elements and change the CSS a lot. Basically this would be a great theme as-is, but not the best candidate for modification, unless you want to code everything yourself. Generally it lacks structure.

Using a CSS grid will simplify modification because it adds a framework on which to build. The downside is that the code won't be semantic, and you'll have to learn to work with the framework, not against it. Most probably the result will look better because everything is aligned to a grid.

Using a complete framework for HTML, CSS and JavaScript framework will lay down an even more elaborate framework to build upon. This will probably make development very streamlined, but also force you to dive into the framework's documentation.

Then there is the other discussion of HTML5 vs XHTML. Personally I'm all for using the latest techniques, including HTML5 and CSS3. Support for older browsers can be fixed with Modernizr or a similar script. Most CSS3 frameworks include this by default.

What do you think?