What is Classless?

Classless is a set of themes for simple web pages (articles, personal websites, blogs) written only with CSS and possibly Javascript. The themes are all based upon the same HTML structure, which doesn’t use any classes or element ids.

Why basing all themes into the same HTML structure?

Because that makes it much easier for CMS development (if you are developing a simple CMS you can let your users change themes without letting them mess up with the HTML rendering process at all); it makes it much easier for people to try out new themes (you can just change a <link> tag and the page has a new theme); and it is much more interesting to develop new themes having this constraint in place.

Why not using classes?

If we’re going to have a fixed HTML structure, a lot of arbitrary choices must be made for what will be that structure. Having to choose how many classes and what would be the name of the classes would be much more complicated than choosing not to have any classes at all. Having no classes also makes it easier for the person who is writing the HTML of some page in particular in which a Classless theme will be used.

Besides not having classes, what other arbitrary decisions were made?

To make things less arbitrary and more useful, we tried to follow W3C recommendations for the HTML structure, so the HTML would have meaning. Because of that, and because having multiple element names, each one in a meaningful location of the page, makes it easier for theme developers, the basic HTML structure uses <main>, <nav>, <aside>, <article>, <section>, all these nice “new” elements, and not a single <div> – except one that is optional but recommended place to place the article text content.

Where is this being used?

Currently, it is being used in websites generated by Websites for Trello, Ursprung and flowi.es; along with some other standalone personal websites.

Can I have other questions?

Yes, please, contact us through the form on the bottom! we also accept suggestions and complaints.