http://blogs.msdn.com/corrinab/archive/tags/CSS/default.aspxTags: CSSen-USCommunityServer 2.1 SP1 (Build: 61025.2)http://blogs.msdn.com/corrinab/archive/2008/04/29/8438880.aspxTue, 29 Apr 2008 22:09:00 GMT91d46819-8472-40ad-a661-2c78acb4018c:8438880CorrinaB5http://blogs.msdn.com/corrinab/comments/8438880.aspxhttp://blogs.msdn.com/corrinab/commentrss.aspx?PostID=8438880<P>As a user experience designer, the visual design of content I produce is&nbsp;an important consideration.&nbsp;Therefore, I had to create a new&nbsp;visual design for my blog because the default was&nbsp;a bit&nbsp;dull for my tastes, and I felt that it didn't represent me as a designer very well. I had a few simple goals in mind&nbsp;for the new design, and they included the following...</P> <UL> <LI>The design had to be visually distinct</LI> <LI>The design had to use strong colors</LI> <LI>The content in the UI had to remain readable</LI> <LI>The individual sections of the UI had to remain visually distinct</LI> <LI>I wanted to play with the book metaphor</LI> <LI>The design had to be implementable through use of CSS modifications</LI></UL> <P>After producing a mockup&nbsp;for a redesign of my blog in PhotoShop, I began to explore how to modify the CSS for the UI (user interface). I checked out the source for one of the pages and was quickly able to access the CSS&nbsp;information I needed and, low and behold, the blog also had tools that would allow me to easily customize the CSS and apply it to the UI. At this point I was pretty much&nbsp;good to go, except for the fact that I hadn't redesigned a site through CSS modifications alone in years.&nbsp;</P> <P>In&nbsp;order to get inspired and ready to&nbsp;dig into the CSS,&nbsp;I took a quick peak at the cool stuff that people were doing at <A class="" href="http://www.csszengarden.com/" mce_href="http://www.csszengarden.com/">CSS Zen Garden</A>. Then, I dove into modifying the CSS, and after many hours of twiddling I was finally able to get the UI to look&nbsp;like I&nbsp;had designed it to look. Now my blog has a visual design I'm happy with! Yay!</P> <P>Here's a before&nbsp;image of the blog template I modified (it's amazing what you can do with CSS and a few images)...</P> <P mce_keep="true"><IMG title="Screen shot" style="WIDTH: 201px; HEIGHT: 152px" height=152 alt="Screen shot" src="http://k61z4g.blu.livefilestore.com/y1pqTOTHOMTdouzGOhl_NGQC5RRnhvkPbf_2UPL19kCoY4dmKKa4HXNqM-evZ5tcLaTwiLfq40DKcCvt_xrivOAIw/oldImg.jpg" width=201 mce_src="http://k61z4g.blu.livefilestore.com/y1pqTOTHOMTdouzGOhl_NGQC5RRnhvkPbf_2UPL19kCoY4dmKKa4HXNqM-evZ5tcLaTwiLfq40DKcCvt_xrivOAIw/oldImg.jpg"></P> <P>I'm compelled to include some Silverlight 2 information in this post, so here are a few interesting tidbits&nbsp;I've found recently that I'd like to share...</P> <UL> <LI>This is an interesting post by <A class="" href="http://mattberseth.com/blog/2008/03/sorting_with_silverlight_2s_da.html" mce_href="http://mattberseth.com/blog/2008/03/sorting_with_silverlight_2s_da.html">Matt Berseth</A> on sorting and filtering content in the Silverlight 2 Beta 1 DataGrid control</LI> <LI>This is another interesting post for the Silverlight 2 Beta 1 DataGrid control. In this post you learn how to do CRUD operations using Linq to SQL and WCF from the <A class="" href="http://blogs.msdn.com/swiss_dpe_team/archive/2008/04/04/crud-operations-with-optimistic-locking-using-silverlight-2-beta1-wcf-and-linq-to-sql-inserts-updates-and-deletes.aspx" mce_href="http://blogs.msdn.com/swiss_dpe_team/archive/2008/04/04/crud-operations-with-optimistic-locking-using-silverlight-2-beta1-wcf-and-linq-to-sql-inserts-updates-and-deletes.aspx">Swiss MSDN team</A></LI></UL><img src="http://blogs.msdn.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=8438880" width="1" height="1">Corrina BarberSilverlight 2CSS