Zenfandel

I recieved an unexpected but wonderful email this afternoon. It was from Dave Shea and it informed me that my submission titled Zenfandel has been accepted into to the CSS Zen Garden as an official design.

For those of you who may be unfamiliar with the Zen Garden, it's purpose is to demonstrate the power and flexibility of CSS. The concept is quite simple. You are given a static HTML file and you create a design for it. The catch is that you cannot modify the HTML. You can only create a CSS file that styles the entire document. The site displays those designs. The neat thing about the site is that the content you see on any page is the same. It's the HTML that you can't modify. The only thing that changes is the CSS file. This way, you can always read what the Zen Garden is about no matter what design you're looking at.

Anyway, my design has a wine/vinyard theme and the name is a play on the name of one of the popular wines, Zinfandel, but with a Zen feel. The photos were obtained from Stock Exchange and manipulated to help further the theme—complete with custom labels on the corks and bottles at the bottom of the page.

I think the best part about doing a project like this is that it's situation is different than what I normally do. As a web developer, I design and code sites every day but this is a self-contained project with only one page and there's pretty much limitless freedom. It's like a nice break from the daily routine. I had a great time making it and am definitely thinking about making another one to see what else I can come up with.

Ironically, I never drink wine. Go figure!

Thanks, Dave!