No design blog would be complete without a reference to Dave Shea's css Zen Garden. The CSS Zen Garden is an experiment in just how much the design of a website can be controlled with CSS. Shea created a webpage, and invited designers to submit stylesheets to alter its appearance. As of today, the site features 329 designs, each of which applies a different stylesheet and images to the unmodified web page. The variety in the designs is tremendous, effectively hilighting the power of CSS.

After perusing the Garden, I had the idea to create a similar site with one major difference: designers are only allowed to alter the stylesheet--no new images may be added. The purpose of this page (the CSS Trappist Monastery) is to focus on text-based design, ensuring that images are not being used as a crutch.

Anyone interested in modern useful web design techniques (bleeding edge technology that aren't widely supported are discouraged) would do well to peruse the Garden.