Every Drupal website has some telling signs that show it is made with Drupal. That isn't an issue, it's not like we're trying to hide it: we're proud of Drupal. Yet some elements are hardly ever themed, or when they do get styled it is in hindsight, after someone notices the tabs or the grippie doesn't match the whole of the design. Can we do something about it?
The folks at Chapter Three proposed a template approach: starting from an Adobe Fireworks template, try to get every Drupal element styled (google it). Good for graphic-oriented designers, but we're the next generation: we design in the browser with tools like Compass and Firebug.
So I decided to scratch this itch of mine. Drupal Compass Plugin implements the Template Approach (tm) in SASS files, and through a brief and mostly painless separation of selectors and skin (actual styles) we can even make the styles portable among base themes, core version (in the roadmap) and even different CMSs (dreamland).
It's already there, under active development. Let me show it to you and give you the tool you were looking for. And let's have fun designing in the browser.