Now you know how much I like patterns. Friends over at Irdial sent this little article along to make my life easier.

"The biggest challenge for web designers is the unthinkably huge number of possible ways to solve any given problem. We usually don't think of this because we have our habits and traditions to fall back on, but there are literally billions of possible pixel combinations for each page we make."

Hmmm, drop the habits and conditions, sounds like my yoga teacher!

"There is a better way to manage this vast complexity than by making big decisions up front and hoping for the best. To make better sites — sites that are functional, beautiful, and "usable" — we have to break our design problems up into small independent chunks based on the real issues within our requirements. Christopher Alexander, who came up with this stuff, calls these chunks patterns."

For the record, breaking up design challenges into smaller bits is not a new concept [to me], nor is determining importance, but this is so simply explained that you just have to love it.