About Bamboo

Introducing Bamboo

Bamboo helps you to create standards-based, cross-browser page layouts more easily by providing a new layout language that is more natural than CSS for defining layouts.

Bamboo interprets your layout defined in the Bamboo layout language and translates it to standards-based CSS and JavaScript code that implements that layout.

There are three steps to create and use a Bamboo layout:

1. Define a grid that divides your page up into cells, and tells Bamboo how to allocate the available space to those cells.
2. Create your HTML with a <div> element for each region in your page, and allocate those regions to particular cells in your grid
3. Bamboo snaps your region <div>'s into place, resizing and repositioning them according to your layout.

Bamboo is dedicated to the memory of Henry Robert James Cooper.

Sites Using Bamboo

The following sites are using Bamboo:

• The Bamboo site itself (no surprise there)
• Brendon Matheson

Using Bamboo on your site and want to link it here? Drop us a line at bamboo@x1seven.com

I've read enough! I want to try it!

If you're the sort that believes that user manuals are just there to provide extra padding in the box, you'll probably want to jump straight in and start playing with the Bamboo Online Editor which lets you design page layouts and preview how they'll behave in the browser.

To gently ease into the concepts behind Bamboo and put together a working example, try the Quickstart Tutorial.

For the full gory details and task-specific guides, check out the User Manual and the HOWTO Guides.

All these resources are linked from the top nav bar so you can get to them easily later.

Browser Compatibility

Bamboo has been tested and verified on the following OS / browser combinations:

• Microsoft Windows / Internet Explorer 6
• Microsoft Windows / Internet Explorer 5
• Microsoft Windows / Mozilla Firefox 2.0
• Microsoft Windows / Mozilla Firefox 1.5
• Microsoft Windows / Mozilla Firefox 1.0.7
• Microsoft Windows / Mozilla Firefox 1.0.4
• Microsoft Windows / Mozilla Firefox 1.0.2
• Microsoft Windows / Mozilla Firefox 1.0.1
• Microsoft Windows / Mozilla Firefox 1.0
• Microsoft Windows / Mozilla Firefox 0.9
• Microsoft Windows / Mozilla Firefox 0.8
• Microsoft Windows / Mozilla 1.7.12
• Microsoft Windows / Mozilla 1.7
• Microsoft Windows / Mozilla 1.6
• Microsoft Windows / Mozilla 1.5
• Microsoft Windows / Mozilla 1.4

Note that Mozilla's CSS implementation doesnt' provide content clipping.

Status

Bamboo's version is currently 1.0.1. Bamboo is made available as open source under GNU's LGPL license.

Hey! Is this standards-compliant?

Yes, Bamboo is standards-based, relying on XHTML and CSS. It also takes advantage of existing reliable cross-browser features, namely JavaScript and CSS absolute positioning.

Bamboo contains no proprietary extensions, browser plugins, or crazy Internet Explorer CSS-hacks!

Participating and Contributing

If you like Bamboo, why not help make it a better technology, and get your name in lights at the same time! You can get involved in the following areas:

Code	We have a tidy little list of features and improvements that we'd like to make to Bamboo. The technical skills that these features need are: Java JavaScript HTML Internet Explorer BHO's Firefox Extensions Ajax / DHTML
Cross-Browser Testing	Being a presentation technology, this is very important to us. We especially need assistance with testing on the Mac platform.
Documentation	We feel quite strongly about making the documentation for Bamboo as clear and useable as possible. Suggestions, sample layouts, tutorials, etc are all most welcome.

Imagery

The feature image at the top of this page is an excerpt from a gorgeous photograph taken by Bob Jones. See his full size photograph at Flickr and check out his other great photographs while you're there. Note this image is used under the terms of the Creative Commons