Request: Sample Website CSS's?

[Stephen Davis]

Hi all;

We'd like to come up with one or two generalized CSS stylesheets to use for 
our new "LibraryWeb" site, a prototype of which is now up for comment by 
the campus community  (http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/).

As in many libraries, our web content is created in a distributed manner by 
a wide variety of staff, and we'd like to begin encouraging the use of 
content-based stylesheets rather than the ad hoc and unpredictable types of 
presentation markup we've been doing since the beginning of HTML.

Although we could create something from scratch, I thought I'd at least ask 
about whether someone else has done something like this already.  I've 
included below some very preliminary CSS definitions we're working with to 
illustrate what we think we're after...

What this feels like, weirdly, is backing into creating a DTD for a 
research library website.  Clearly different library web sites will have 
different requirements, but I wonder if there isn't a set of common 
content-based elements.  (I'm also looking at nomenclature from the 
magazine publishing world to see how that might correspond to our needs.)

Comments or suggestions welcome! /Stephen Davis, Columbia University Libraries

PS: Sorry if this has already been aired; if so, just let me know and I'll 
head to the archives...

======================
SAMPLE CSS statements

.banner {font-family:arial, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; 
font-style:normal; text-decoration:none; font-weight:bold}

.sidebar {font: bold 12px/12pt Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;}

.cols {font: 11px/16px verdana, arial, geneva, sans-serif;}

.footer {font: 10px/14px verdana, arial, geneva, sans-serif;}

.menu {font-family: verdana, arial, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; 
text-decoration: none}

.intro {font: 10px/12px verdana, arial, geneva, sans-serif; text-align: 
justify; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 4px}

.caption {font-family: Verdana, Arial, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; 
font-weight: normal; color: #FFFFFF; font-style: italic}

.blurb { font: 10px/14px verdana, arial, geneva, sans-serif; ; 
text-decoration: none}

.forminput {  font-family: "Courier New", Courier, mono; font-size: 10pt}
	[for user input into HTML forms]

.directory {  font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; 
font-size: 10px}