More CSS basic questions

[Kenny L]

How would you take the layout of an existing page and use that to make the style sheet? I'm redesigning a site where alot of pages will have the same content, tables, etc., the only things that are different page to page are the photos and descriptions of products and the shopping cart element.
What I'd like to do is make an external style sheet based on the new page, so reformatting all the pages won't be so tedious. Also, the possibility exists that the menu bar on the left of the new page could change, so updating one CSS file would be much more sane that fixing hundreds of pages. I'm not so well versed in how to use CSS, this is my first time dealing with it, so forgive me for asking obvious questions. Thanks.

Here's the old page;
http://www.phenomenondesigns.com/stafftest/alli-psi.html

And the new one:
http://www.phenomenondesigns.com/stafftest/alli-psi_n.html

[LMolineux]

hey Kenny please Email me at headnut1@comcast.net i have some questions for you please. BTW great site and love the bike idea and sales.

[Dan Grossman]

CSS won't help you with updating the menu. CSS defines styles, how things appear, not their actual content. Your menu links would still be in HTML somewhere. You could use PHP or SSI, or any server-side language to include the menu in each page so that you can edit the menu of all pages easily.

As far as rewriting a page to use external CSS, "designing with web standards" is a great book.