As many of you know, CE has put up a site to teach others some of the best practices of web design/development.  One of the pages on this site is a showpiece of CSS flexibility called "The Beauty of CSS".  Like "CSS Zen Garden", this page is meant for others to contribute CSS and design elements to show how a little change can alter the whole look of a page.

Currently, there are only 2 designs set up.  Now I know there are some creative people around here, so I'm challenging each of you to come up with something new and original for this page.  CE designed this site to help people out of the kindness of his heart, and isn't asking anything in return for his contribution to the world wide web, the least we can do is give him a hand.

I have taken up the challenge to show just how poor my design skills are, but will hopefully show that I know a fair amount to do with CSS

Please inform me where to submit my css to, when i get round to finishing it

He has a submission page here: http://validwebdesigns.com/beauty-of-css-guidelines.php

Northie wrote:

I have taken up the challenge to show just how poor my design skills are, but will hopefully show that I know a fair amount to do with CSS

That's OK Northie, I've been told I need to work on making my stick figures better.

the page itself has some usability issues.
It does not work because the participants list looks like people who contributed to the text on the page.
I'd suggest puting the links to the samples/contributions in the mid column, not as a secondary thing tucked away. This would increase relevance and hopefully participation.

I would contribute but I only manage basic CSS 

matte wrote:

the page itself has some usability issues.
It does not work because the participants list looks like people who contributed to the text on the page.
I'd suggest puting the links to the samples/contributions in the mid column, not as a secondary thing tucked away. This would increase relevance and hopefully participation.

Was this a deliberate plug to get some people on side for CSS?

The beauty of CSS is that the page elements that concern you can be changed, re styled and re positioned - i'll try to incorporate this into my design!!!

just pointing out a poor logic process in the page design, is all

matte wrote:

just pointing out a poor logic process in the page design, is all

No, you're not - you're stuck in the visual plane of this.

The participants section of this page is

<h3>Participants</h3>

<p><a href="http://www.7hunters.net" rel="external">Sandbox Design by Seven</a></p>

<p>Columns Design by <a href="http://www.binoware.com" rel="external">Steven A S</a></p>

Which is pure semantics, CSS can place this anywhere on the page and style it in any way

If what you see isn't to your liking it's to do with the authors of the css, not the html

exactly, I'm talking about it location on the visual page.  Readers reach the end of the page and there is no logical next step - other than to hunt around the side columns for what to do next.

I am not talking code, so thrusting a code quote into the thread serves no purpose.

I am simply saying the links to examples would be better placed at the end of the centre column, perhaps with a logical subhead like, see some examples

Following the discussion here, I have made a couple minor changes to the page.

Changed the h3 heading for the participants websites.

Placed these inside a div making it easier to place and style these separately

<div class="participants">

<h3>The Beauty of CSS Participants Websites</h3>

<p>Sandbox Design by <a href="http://www.7hunters.net" rel="external">Seven</a></p>

<p>Columns Design by <a href="http://www.binoware.com" rel="external">Steven A S</a></p>

</div><!-- end participants -->