I have been a fan of the CSS Zen Garden for a long time. Recently, however, I have noticed that most of the examples are practical for real-world sites where the content changes from page to page and over time. Chris Heilmann has noticed as well.

CSSZenGarden.com is a great example of what CSS can be in an ideal situation. CSS Zen Garden shows what CSS can do for a one-page site whose content never changes. That isn't the world most of us deal with. Most of us deal with sites with multiple pages where the content changes from time to time.

Enter CSS Factory, a real-world alternative to the Zen Garden.

Right now, CSS Factory is just an idea.

While I think it is a great idea, a few points do concern me:

• Chris mentions changing content order. So long as the order changes only for the content-area and not the template stuff (navigation, pieces that don't change from page to page), I think that is great.
• Chris mentions changing order using JavaScript with a PHP fallback. I think it would be a lot easier to just use straight PHP for that.

• Suggest (impose?) a total page-weight of 40K (34K is the suggested page-weight for 10 seconds on 56K modem)
• Recognize the specialization of talent in the modern web and give separate credit for design and code. This would allow more entries as designers and coders could collaborate on projects.