Themes versus Cascading Style Sheets

The challenge of maintaining a consistent look and feel across a website is not a new one. Not too long ago, developers used cascading style sheets (CSS) to define how the site should look. The use of CSS was a step towards separating design elements from HTML. Graphic designers could work independently on the CSS file, providing information such as color schemes, font types, spacing, margins, and other visual effects. Should the need arise to change any of these attributes, all that the designer needed to do was to amend the CSS file, and voilà, the look and feel of the site would be instantly refreshed!

Nevertheless, despite the advantages of using CSS, modifications to a site's design still required a fair bit of work. Just think about the last time a complex control such as a new calendar control was introduced to a site that you worked on. In order to give a desired look and feel to the control, several styles had to be applied: One for the title...