From working for Intense Debate, I’ve encountered quite a few situations where my design should style something, but just to some extent. Since our comments system should fit nicely to the context it’s contained in, my design is limited to just include basic parts of the system. Like buttons or the user menu. The rest I should style, but only partially, as the master stylesheet should set the basics.
This is often very frustrating.
I can’t design any of the vital parts of the widget, because if I do it might clash with the publicers CSS. And the parts I can style must fit perfectly with ANY kind of design, which means they can’t be too unique or too special. Take the buttons for example: They are white, with a slightly grey gradient and a little shadow. That’s it. To spice them up a little I make them bigger when you hover them, and the text is all uppercase. But that’s it.
I really think it works the way it’s supposed to though, but again, it’s not very inspiring work. I’m longing for when I can design more special/extreme skins.