You may have heard of yaml (rhymes with Camel). Yaml is used in Rails config files; as it’s very own Recursive Acronym states, it is not mark up language. The Literature describes it as
“a straightforward machine parsable data serialization format designed for human readability and interaction with scripting languages such as Perl and Python.”
Very nice.
However, now there is also YAML (also, rhymes with Camel?). YAML is
an (X)HTML/CSS framework for creating modern and flexible floated layouts.
Despite the naming confusion, the latter YAML looks like a nifty toolkit. CSS layout is notoriously tricky, thanks mostly to Our Friends In Redmond And Their Ubiquitous Browser. Anything that speeds/eases the process is definitely a good thing. It is free to use under a Creative Commons license which requires that “a backlink to the YAML homepage (http://www.yaml.de) in a suitable place (e.g.: footer of the website or in the imprint)” be placed. For those who would rather not include such a thing, a commercial license is available.
YAML is fairly complex, if only because it aims to be a general, flexible solution for CSS layout, and CSS layout can be complicated; ergo, YAML has a bit of a learning curve. Until I try it, I’m not yet sure that it’s worthwhile… though, it does look like it has a good collection of the various IE hacks, and reading the YAML documentation may well remind you of all the various cross-browser “gotchas” you need to avoid when creating a CSS layout.
