How does your blockquote look?

This is a boring, but fairly default, blockquote which is indented, has a single vertical line and italics, but not much else to distinguish it.

Now here is a quote with quote marks (and indentation and smaller text and a different color).  Sheesh, no wonder I feel inadequate.  This is a great look, although it seems better suited to a literary kind of quote.

This would give a bit more sense of separation with slightly different color and thicker bar, but without the image.

This sets off nicely against Bob's colored background, but may not look so great here.

But, I would have to avoid getting weird and garish.

What has been said:

509.1. Philip Storry (10/30/2006 08:54 AM)

Whilst I'm flattered that you use my blog as an example, I have to give credit where it's due - I think that's the default style that comes with DominoBlog, so Steve Castledine deserves the credit!

Actually, the design itself is ported, from a design by Michael Heilemann. I'm not sure who ported the design to DominoBlog, but there could be three people I'd riding on the coattails of here... *grins*

For what it's worth, I do prefer that style, though. It's clear and concise. One of the dangers with the fancy "graphic quote mark behind the paragraph" style that you demonstrate is that it can be easy to confuse other blocks for quotes.

This can happen especially if you follow your quote with a code block or a pre block, for example. Unless they also have a suitable graphic, it can get confusing.

Oh, and the style is affected by CSS, as you've not doubt noticed. So is the Graphic In The Background technique, but I prefer the border size method as it tends to degrade more gracefully - and requires fewer elements on the page, so it also laods faster over slower connections.

Anyway, good luck finding a suitable style. I hope I've given you some food for thought. ;-)