Mar 03
A FREE CSS Authoring Tool!
2004 at 04.04 am posted by Veerle Pieters
The best things in life aren’t free. But sometimes something great and unexpected pops up. I came across what seems to be a wonderful Free CSS Authoring tool. Yes you read it right it’s free!. But wait it gets better, this tool is available for Mac OS X, Windows, Mac OS 9 and Linux.
Simple CSS allows you to easily create Cascading Style Sheets from scratch, and/or modify existing ones, using a familiar point-and-click interface. With Simple CSS, you can manage multiple CSS projects and import your existing style sheets. Simple CSS supports CSS2. You can download it here.
There are other CSS Authoring tools out there but most of them our not free.
Yesterday for example Style Master 3.5 was released. It runs on Mac OS X and Windows. This app has some exciting features, a collection of wizards and templates make it easy for you to create ready to go style sheets, navbars, breadcrumb trails, layouts and whole sites, without even having to look at the CSS until you’re ready for it.
Just for Mac OS X users you can now preview the current statement or style sheet, with the HTML document of your choice, using Safari, right inside Style Master. Style Master 3.5 costs $59.99. There is 30 day demo available. I just downloaded it to try it out. Will keep you informed in what I think of it.
My favorite tool of choice is still CSSEdit 1.5. The only disadvantage with the other tools above is it is a Mac OS X only program. But it has the cleanest interface of them all, nice icons etc… CSSEdit 1.5 features full-blown source editing for the advanced user. With one click you transform the easy to use visual editors into a mighty source code environment. Besides standard coding features such as syntax coloring and auto-indentation, CSSEdit offers intelligent auto-complete. CSSEdit 1.5 lets you see your styles in three different ways: quickly in the outline view, instantly in the preview drawer and in the context of your web pages in the extended preview.
You can even extract styles from other sites. It’s the best and easiest way to learn all about others’ use of CSS. There is no 30 day limit in this app just some limitations in characters (2499) and nag messages. It is cheaper then Style Master 3.5, CSSEdit 1.5 costs $24.99. Download it now.
Hope this helps somehow in your search for the perfect CSS Authoring tool ;-)
13served
1
Ok , you’ve been more than convincing !! I downloaded it and I’ll stay up one night to give it a shot! ;-)
when do your courses start? ;-)
( can styles be extracted with Sitesucker ??, just curious )
2
Another free tool I started using recently that is pretty cool is the Edit CSS Module for Firefox . It lets you edit a CSS file in the sidebar while the html page it affects is live-updated in the main window. It works really well when you’re trying to figure out how margins will collapse in a blog layout, etc.
3
I’ve only dabbled with CSS, I usually just guess-and-check with what I’m changing and what I’m trying to achieve. I wish you would have posted this two days ago, right before I decided to redo my blog page completely. Haha.
4
Veerle, ik heb een vraagje ivm jouw CSS file, hoe plaats je die dotted line onder jouw links?
Help.
5
I tried many times to install this soft on Windows 2000, but it doesn’t work :-(
Does anybody managed to do it ?
6
it failed to install on Win98.
7
CSSEdit is my editor of choice too. I tried the previous versions of Style Master and found them to be buggy on OS X. It did come with an impressive CSS manual. Great for beginners like me. I’ll give the current version a shot though the clean interface of CSSEdit has my vote for now.
8
xjawax, ik ben wel Veerle niet maar toch:
a {
border-bottom: 1px dotted #ff9900;
}
a kan je veranderen in a:hover etc en de breedte en het kleur enzo kan je ook aanpassen.
http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_intro.asp
http://www.htmldog.com/guides/cssbeginner/
9
@xjawax, yes Fabian is right just use :
a:link {text-decoration: none;
border-bottom: 1px dotted #485F5F;
}
a:hover {
border-bottom: 1px solid #c30;
}
This is the code if you want a dotted line for your links and a solid line when you roll over them. Hope this helps.
10
@Roger, yes I think it can. If this program can download an entire site then the styles are also extracted I think. This should be.
11
@Emmanual and Jason, I’m afraid Simple CSS is only compatible with Windows XP. I did a test myself in Windows ME and it failed to start up :-(, on XP however I had no problem.
12
Fabian en Veerle, bedankt voor de info!
Ik ga deze code eens proberen in mijn blog!
13
My friend Melissa mentioned you in her post today, so I came over to see what you were talking about. :) One CSS editor that you didn’t mention is TopStyle, which also works well for editing html and php and whatever else you need. Its a bit more expensive, but to me, it was worth every penny! :) SimpleCSS is a new one to me, so I’m gonna download it and see, just for fun. :) Thanks!