Sharepoint Master Page Look and Feel

Sharepoint 3.0 has a great new feature called master pages, same technology as the underlying .net framework 2.0. One of the short comings of Sharepoint is the semi mechanical look and feel of the default home page, but thankfully with some good html and css knowledge you can create a Sharepoint site that looks as good as it functions. Suggestions:

1. Use Sharepoint Designer when designing, vs.net 2005 is not a good choice, save that for heavy lifting like workflow and web part development.
2. Use the minimal master page :http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa660698.aspx, don't try to dig around - start from a good templeate.
3. Use the built in versioning of Sharepoint.
4. Be creative, you've got a killer set of functionality so make the site rock.

Links :

Microsoft Office: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointdesigner/HA101551701033.aspx

MSDN : http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms476046.aspx

iAffari: http://www.iaffari.com/