I always like reading the stylesheets for websites– they are windows into the attitude and personality of the site developer. To find a stylesheet, just right-click inside the window of any site and choose "View Source". Then do a search for "css". It’s always in the head (or beginning) of the document. Here’s the head for the New York Times (CSS file is in bold):
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title>The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia</title><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"/>
<meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="900"/>
<meta http-equiv="Expires" content="0"/>
<meta http-equiv="Pragma" content="no-cache"/>
<meta name="robots" content="noarchive"/>
<meta name="description" content="Find breaking news, multimedia, reviews & opinion on Washington, business, sports, movies, travel, books, jobs, education, real estate, cars & more."/>
<meta name="keywords" content="null"/>
<meta NAME="HOMEPAGE_TEMPLATE_VERSION" CONTENT="300"/>
<link rel="alternate" TYPE="application/rss+xml" TITLE="RSS" HREF="http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/HomePage.xml"/><link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/css/common/global.css" />
<style type="text/css">
@import url(http://graphics8.nytimes.com/css/home/screen/general.css);
</style>
<script type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript" src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/js/Tacoda_AMS_DDC_Header.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript" src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/js/common/screen/DropDown.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript" src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/js/home/screen/common.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript" src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/js/common.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript" src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/js/fileit.js"></script>
</head>
Once you find the css file, copy/ paste the path into the browser window and see the code that controls how the site is laid out.
So I looked at the NYT stylesheet. Regular stuff– it shows the author, the version, etc. At the bottom, though, is this:
/* move this crap to section front if needed, what a mess... - James
ul, ol {
padding-left: 0px;
margin-left: 18px;
_margin-left: 22px;
}
*/
Judging from their recent redesign (including the extra-wide 980 pixel layout), not a mess at all.