I think these folks might be a little hard on Staples.com myself. While they correct, the site is pretty ugly, the new styling that it had before the rollback will likely be coming back shortly after all of the bad press the Staples site has been getting for its poor layout choices. I say give them a few weeks. Let’s see if the upgrade the site again. After all, patience is a virtue.

Update: Apparently, we BUZZed too soon; it appears that Staples has rolled back their site to its previous design. Hopefully this is a temporary hiccup, and Staples will soon be CSS-licious yet again.

Following on the heels of its standards-savvy redesign of their customer rewards center, Staples.com has just launched with an all-CSS redesign. And as a sometime shopper of the site, I for one seriously appreciate how the now-lightweight markup has made the pages’ rendering times faster than greased bunnies.

Okay, I officially shouldn’t BUZZ before coffee.

Sexy though it may be, it’s worth noting that the hours-old design isn’t without its issues. The site’s main navigation is rife with javascript: pseudo-links, rendering Staples.com completely inaccessible to anyone browsing without JavaScript; a quick skim of the source suggests that the functionality could easily be replicated through some intelligently applied onclick handlers, which would allow a wider array of users to enjoy the site.

And sadly, much of the site’s XHTML doesn’t come close to validating, due largely to the ol’ bugaboo of unencoded ampersands. One would hope that a brand such as Staples might leverage some of its clout against its CMS vendor, so that they can slap some truly future-proof markup on its homepage.

But all in all, I think Staples deserves a high-five for the work done to date, and a hearty congratulations on their redesign—I’m looking forward to further site innovations and improvements in the weeks ahead.