Hm... Turning back the clock? I'm not quite sure if I understand what the purpose of this thread is. HTML is easy. HTML + CSS is (or at least it can be) sexy.
My favs:
http://www.cssbeauty.com
http://cssvault.com
http://www.cssimport.com
But the bottomline for every designer or programmer should be - at least in my eyes - to make the work quick and easy and - what is even more important - to satisfy the customer.
HTML and CSS seperates Content and Design, what can speed up the work. Who the heck cares about guidelines or what customer cares about having his website w3c compliant?
Well... Don't get me wrong. Guidelines are good and filesize is allways a point to go back and optimize your work. But like the old saying goes: A picture can tell more than thousand words.
So I go for the picture... and load it into Flash if I need it.
cheers
Robert