Wither the Web?

The web technologies continue to change and improve. With the advent of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), more artistic web pages can be created. There is a wonderful web site that demonstrates the power of this technology: css Zen Garden.

As wonderful as this technology is, it makes it even more difficult for the average user with a web site to publish pages that utilize the benefits of Cascading Style Sheets. The learning curve is steep and not all browsers implement the standard properly. I do notice that the blogging sites, such as blogger.com and blog.com, make use of style sheets for postings and the main blog. Perhaps, here is where css will demonstrate its value: in supporting tools that can automate the creation of web sites.

The automation tools will publish the web pages using standard css tags. A site designer can create a custom look for the site by crafting cascading style sheets and images for the customer. The automation tool can be utilized by many different web site owners to update and create the web pages. The owner would contract with a graphics designer for the unique look via a custom css file set. This custom css file set would be a one-time setup, until the site owner wishes to change the look of the site.