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CSS Zen Garden - The Power Of CSS

By Bud Kraus
bud@joyofcode.com
Joy Of Code
Creator And Instructor

Originally Published: 2005

If you're not quite sure what Cascading Style Sheets do and why CSS is so powerful then it's time to enter the CSS Zen Garden. This is something I stumbled upon a least a year ago and am now considering as the project in my newest online workshop with a working title of "Practical CSS "

The CSS Zen Garden is (or was) a contest of sorts among Graphic Artists. Each designer was given one Plain Jane XHTML file - CSS Zen Garden The Beauty Of CSS Design - with not a lick of any style applied to it.

Each designer was then tasked with bringing style to the file. The details of the project (and one example of what could be done with CSS) are at the Zen Garden Home Page. At the bottom of the page are the requirements that each designer had to meet.

The results of their work are available from the the links on the right side of the Home Page. It just boggles the mind that they all have the same XHTML file as the structure for the page.

While the project was designed for Graphic Artists I think it is instructive for everyone who has anything to do with web development, design or production. I'm no Graphic Artist but there is so much there for me - and others - to study.

As I continue to develop my next online workshop I will be examining all of the external CSS files used by the various designers.

What do you think? Did you know that you could achieve high quality design in this way?