Creating a new service, or indeed even just changing the visuals for an old service, is never a simple task.
Firstly you have to come up with a coherent design: one that compliments the contents of the site; one that works across all pages within the site; one that is visually appealing; and one that all the parties involved are happy with… Not my forte: I get a designer to do that.
Next you need to modify this design so that it can be created as a validating, accessible, cross-platform base.
What I like to do is then mock-up a few pages, maybe half a dozen, as proper xhtml pages – so that people can poke and prod them, be happy that they render across all browers and platforms, that they scale with font sizes, and that they look fine on different monitor/window sizes.
I’ve done all that, I’ve created the 100+ web pages… and now I’m going through the laborious task of verifying each one actually validates, and actually renders correctly under a range of browsers.
… and who said writing web pages was easy? <chuckle />
The thoughts of a Code Gorilla 