Similar Web design author

Just noticed today that the same person who designed the majority of the "official" CSS Zen Garden sites (Dave Shea) also has done the different templates for the Blogger site as well. Now I am wondering if he has done others for larger websites. Just goes to show you that since he enabled himself more time to design rather than program, surely it added to his time to make significant earnings from emerging websites. I will add to this if I find any more by him.

The other thing about this is that I think that after learning some CSS basics, I will be able to modify my own blog page (and hopefully some of my other pages) using it.

I also was curious about Dave Shea's own website, so I found his own blog page HERE. It has contact info as well, so if you come across a question that can't be answered by the book or John, this might turn out to be a valuable resource.
Check it out if you are interested.

CSS Zen Garden Sites

For this blog I am supposed to pick two CSS layouts from www.csszengarden.com and list 3 positive and 3 negative aspects of each. CSS is just an overlay to manipulate HTML code quickly and easily. After spending some time looking at many layouts, I picked many more than 2 that I am interested in, but for the sake of keeping this short, I will pick 2 of the ones that got my attention.

I hate tables by Philippe Piotait -
http://csszengarden.com/?cssfile=http://piotait.philippe.free.fr/csszengarden2/sample.css

Positive aspects:
1. Many subtle details (corner turns, some shadows, pin indentations)
2. Weathered/Used look on computer is nice change.
3. Information is easily found.

Negative aspects:
1. Doesn't utilize entire space well past top.
2. Hyperlinks hard to see on lined paper
3. Could use more color changes (subtle)


Mondrian by Chris Fletcher -
http://csszengarden.com/?cssfile=http://students.jbu.edu/fletcherc/zen01/sample.css

Positive aspects:
1. Font changes are used well, not overdone. Hyperlinks easily seen by color changes.
2. Information broke up into categories.
3. Color changes break up repetition, but maintain simplicity.

Negative aspects:
1. No use of pictures, could enhance in areas if used sparingly.
2. Grid structure forces text in frame. Why not create frame with text itself in areas?
3. Reading pattern changes from top to bottom. No gaps left to right, then different grids followed by empty areas. Pick one and maintain consistency.

Others that get honorable mentions:
#094 DECO -
http://csszengarden.com/?cssfile=/094/094.css

Tailor Made by Rob Morris -
http://csszengarden.com/?cssfile=http://www.digitalmash.com/zencss2/style.css

CSS Zen Ocean by Kai Laborenz
http://csszengarden.com/?cssfile=http://www.css-praxis.de/cssocean/zenocean.css

RelaxationTime by Escofier Adeline
http://csszengarden.com/?cssfile=http://www.boldairpur.com/css_zen_garden/RelaxationTime.css