One of the best CSS sites out there

Any decent web designer knows what CSS is. But most have a hard time really adopting it. I think this is due to a few reasons.

1. They think it will be too hard to get rid of font tags
2. They think it will be too hard to get rid of HTML tables
3. They don’t see the value (yet) in the power to reskin sites and apps using only CSS
4. It’s hard to get management to spend developer time on it
5. Lack of standard naming with style names

But I found a site that gets you really thinking about about CSS in a whole new way. I have shown this site to clients and they stare at the screen mystified for a moment, then they say “wow, that is really cool”. The funny thing is, web developers say the same thing.

The site is www.csszengarden.com. The idea is simple… make a web site where web developers can upload their own CSS files to re-skin the site and show off. The site stores all the css styles that have been uploaded by visitors, and it makes them easy to browse. It becomes VERY obvious very quickly how powerful CSS can be for re-skinning sites once you browse around this site. Keep in mind that you are looking at the same site over and over again, the only thing that is changing is the style sheet that is being used. VERY compelling stuff.
Just as Fusebox makes ColdFusion applications more flexible, I believe that standardizing CSS style names can also make a web team work with CSS much better. The Delaware.Net design team now has a standard for CSS that we use on our web applications. This allows us to reskin them easier, and it also aids in the development of new web sites and applications.