Mart blogs about the CSS and HTML issues with SharePoint. I agree with everything Mark has said and would like to add that I would love to not only see the CSS and HTML streamlined, but to also see better templates for SharePoint. I recently worked with ProjectServer, and while their style sheets were a mess too, at least the main template or wrapper for each page was located in one main file (for the most part). This made updating the UI for ProjectServer a much easier task than for SharePoint.
I think the SharePoint team would greatly benefit from using the services of an HTML/CSS guru to help make the code easier to read, update and modify. In the time it took me to locate and document the CSS classes for SharePoint, I could have rewritten the HTML code, but didn’t due to that “SharePoint patch fear” with having all your files overwritten, not to mention the extreme depth of the site definition pages.
Site definitions (including the repetitive list definition files) could be vastly streamlined and condensed down. And hey I would love to rewrite any of it.
Speaking of SharePoint and ProjectServer CSS classes, I am currently working on a reference that I can post on my blog that has CSS classes, file location, attributes and screenshots of the class on the page. It is a huge reference, but I plan on getting it out for public consumption as soon as I can.
Thanks Mart for bringing up this much overlooked issue.
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