The MVC pattern adds some clarity to what should go where when it comes to designing a page which requires some data from a data source. The model gets the data from the data source; the controller might do something with that data and then the view will display what the controller passes to it. If the page handles only a single function that's rather easy to both conceptualize and do. However many pages don't just do a single thing, and are made up of modules which may be user customizable and it is this I wish to discuss here. To give a none-cake example of what I am referring to, take a look at the google personalized home page and consider how in cake you would build a page which allows users to select and put various 'blobs' onto their page, and how it would be initially rendered. I choose the term 'blobs' in an attempt to avoid ambiguity with cake terminology.

After a while in development, I have updated the site to a new look and some leaner code. The things I've been working on for the past few weeks are:

• Implement full version control for the source.
• Make the site valid XHTML.
• Replace the use of external libraries with Cake functions where possible.
• Redesign the look for the site.
• Make it possible to customize the look of the site (colours!).
• Redesign the structure of the code for the site.
• Make use of data caching.
• Do some optimising to try and get display times sub 1s.

As some may know, I'm in the process of redesigning this site, triggered in part because of the totally inaccessible manner in which it is displayed in IE7 (I would usually ignore that but it's one thing to not look too good, it's quite another to put the buttons in places that are unreachable). So, IE7 isn't all bad, it gave me something to investigate :). As part of the redesign I've been looking at ways of 'designing' my CSS files such that they can be easily edited and, as an added benefit, provides a means for user customization; in doing so I came across a problem.