vertical-align is used to specify two completely different behaviors depending on where it is used.

not supported in IE, of course ... wonder if there are M$-specific styles?

list of standards that come into support in IE9

interesting site to browse around -- not necessarily the "best practices" in my opinion, but a pretty decent reference

pretty neat tool that yields a pretty comprehensive analysis of site load speed -- includes links to minified versions of un-minified includes.

interesting talk on reducing page payload and CSS size, as well as making the CSS more manageable.

web design help page

browser compatibility charts and samples

M$ fails to adhere to standards; but, at least they provide some tables to show us which standards they fail to meet :)