The CSS Zen Flowerpot Assignment

This assignment, which is based on the very cool CSS Zen Garden web site, has two parts. First, create two different Cascading Style Sheets with different sorts of design elements and apply them to the simple html file you are reading right now. Second, write a brief (about 1000 words, or about four double-spaced typed pages) essay about both the process you went through making these different style sheets and the "writerly" effects you believe you achieved with different style sheets.

First, I'm calling this a "CSS Zen Flowerpot" and not a "CSS Zen Garden" because I want to emphasize the modest scale of this assignment. A full-fledged garden is something not everyone can do because it requires space and resources, and to make a large and impressive garden takes experience and expertise. On the other hand, a flowerpot is the sort of thing that almost anyone can keep almost anyplace-- a dorm room, an apartment porch, a shelf, even a windowless school office.

Second, to extend my metaphor further, different CSS gardners will come up with different CSS flowerpots. Some of you will have cascading style sheets that are like exotic and delicate plants from far away places; some of you will have casscading style sheets that are like common and hard-to-kill plants. That's okay; both kinds of plants/style sheets have a place.

Third, the goal is to use CSS to effect the design of information (in this case, just this particular piece of information) to reach different audiences for different purposes. As Molly Holzschlag writes in her book Spring Into HTML and CSS:

Keeping presentation separate from the document means you can style that document for numerous media, including the screen, print, projection, and even handheld devices.

• You will notice I've incorporated several different html tags in this document. That's to give you something to work with in your style sheets.
• We will be spending a fair amount of time with Holzschlag's suggestions for how to work with CSS, but you can use software (such as Dreamweaver) to help you through the process, and you can use other sources (web sites, books, etc.) to help you with the CSS as well.
• While we are working through some of the "technical" details of CSS with this assignment, we will very soon start reading and discussing some more stylistic/rhetorical/"writerly" issues with web design as well. Ultimately, using CSS is about "re-presenting" information in a way appropriate to specific audiences and purposes.
• While much of this assignment is technical, perhaps the most important aspect of this is the brief essay about the process and the goal(s) of your different style sheets. To be completely honest, I haven't done this assignment before so I don't know exactly what I'm looking for; but I think what I'm looking for is an essay where a) you explain your process and b) you explain the goal of the choices you made with your style sheets. Keeping that in mind, think of the effect different styles might have on different audiences and with different purposes.