Why CSS?

If you've been poking around WebLens, you'll know that the site has recently been overhauled, making full use of CSS cascading stylesheets. CSS provides the ability to make site-wide changes quickly and easily, and to alter look and feel with minimal effort. Stylesheets allow designers to separate content from presentation, and to create web sites that are surprisingly elegant.

Best of all, CSS means that web designers no longer need sacrifice accessibility for sophistication. CSS-based design has been hailed as next-generation web design, and is quickly making a purely HTML-based approach archaic. As web pundit Todd Dominey points out in his amusing and informative blog, What Do I Know?, all the "layout hacks" we are accustomed to, including transparent GIFs, hard-coded line breaks, and nested tables, will soon be history.

If you're not aware of what's possible with CSS, have a look at CSS Zen Garden for inspiration. You may also want to check out the new book by Dave Shea (the brains behind Zen Garden) and Molly Holzschlag. The Zen of CSS Designprovides a tantalizing look behind the scenes of some of the Zen Garden designs. And I have links to some excellent resources on the WebLens Web Design page.