In the past few years, the design community has seen an explosion of sites powered by cascading style sheets (CSS). Highly visible brands such as Fast Company, ESPN.com, PGA, and Blogger have all adopted CSS for the layout of their sites, delivering their compelling content through this excellent Web technology. Their pages have become lighter and more accessible, while a few style sheet files provide them with global control over the user interface of their entire site. The potential of CSS has been well established by these mainstream sites, and the technology (which languished since its introduction in 1996) is quickly becoming the de facto means by which a site’s design is built.

However, while CSS has been elevated to near-buzzword status, it’s important to remember that style sheets are simply a tool to be used in the overall design and development of your Web site. Granted, that tool is an incredibly powerful one, but it can only facilitate high-powered, professional-looking Web sites. Although using style sheets can afford you an unprecedented level of control over your site’s design, no technology is a silver bullet. Despite what technology evangelists might tell you, adopting CSS won’t inherently make your site more usable, your design more compelling, or your breath more wintergreen-fresh.

If we were asked to build a house, there are a few questions we’d want answered before agreeing to do the work. How large will the house be? How many rooms? What kind of budget is allocated for this project? All of these questions are meant to establish the scope of the construction project. It’s a means of gathering information about the project, so that you can more intelligently assess its needs. By establishing the scope of the project, we can better understand exactly how involved the project is, how long it will take to complete, and how much it will cost — all items that are integral to any formal contract.

If you can’t tell by now, our construction metaphors aren’t exactly our strongest point. But while we might have been snoozing through those episodes of This Old House, the parallels to the start of a Web project are uncanny. Before firing up Photoshop or slinging one line of code, you and your client should work together to produce a well-reasoned scope statement. When the deadlines are tight and the expectations high, knowing exactly what is expected of you throughout the course of the project will keep your budget in check, and both you and your client focused.

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