That is pretty cool and creative. One thing though is that you have more markup that does nothing and is only for the purpose of display.
You couldn't add your spotlight effect to css zen garden, but you could possibly add the CSS3 spotlight.
You couldn't add your spotlight effect to css zen garden, but you could possibly add the CSS3 spotlight.
Neither of the submitted solutions are particularly novel, but I'd applaud the CSS2 version more for (if nothing else) the supported browser coverage.
IMHO, there are FAR more interesting things in HTML5/CSS3 than gradients.