CMS Made Simple Forums

Mike,

To get to know a little bit more about CSS, I use Textedit and CSSedit. Both on a Mac. I know that on the forum people explained about using Dreamweaver. Maybe there are other options as well. Google???

Gregor

I'm using PSPad and TopStyle lite on windows xp.  I heard good things about Firebug the firefox extension but have not had time to test.

Tim

If you want to see some real time CSS changes I would recommend using Firefox with the Web Dev. extension...

emacs

mark wrote: If you want to see some real time CSS changes I would recommend using Firefox with the Web Dev. extension...

i agree with mark, and to 'prettyify' source code, i use notepad2.

tsw wrote: emacs

I heard emacs is a good operating system which lacks a good text editor... but I may be mistaken

Possibly more useful than a CSS "Editor" is indeed something that will allow you to see the CSS underlying a HTML page you are viewing.  Personally, I found that dedicated CSS Editors that in fact usually hid the actual CSS code made it more difficult for me to understand CSS than dealing with it directly.  However, an Editor should prevent a number of possible "dumb typing mistakes" that are often difficult to discover.

So.  Yes "Firebug" and the "Web Developer" add-ons for Firefox (both of which, handily, work on the Mac too).  If you are using a Macintosh and Safari or OmniWeb, right click on something on a page and choose "Inspect Element."  Wow!  There's a surprise if you haven't see it before.  You can also click a control and the Web Inspector will attach itself to the bottom of the current browser window... ending up looking rather a lot like Firebug.

Also on the Mac is Xyle scope http://www.culturedcode.com/xyle/ ($20), which gives you an amazing number of ways to "look into" a web page.

ericob wrote: Possibly more useful than a CSS "Editor" is indeed something that will allow you to see the CSS underlying a HTML page you are viewing. 

I've been using CSSViewer the Firefox add-on.  Only thing I would like better is to know if the property is inheritied or not.

Tim

Hi

I use a combination of Notepad++ and a program called StyleMaster. I can heartily recommend this prog as excellent vfm. It's not perfect but it is a paradigm shift from having to code 'blind' and even shows in which browsers your css will work using a traffic light system. I have the paid version but I believe that there is a 30 day trial.
My version is 4.6 so it may be worth checking out for updated versions.

Topstyle. It also handles html just fine. And it was written by the same guy who made homesite, and there is no better pedigree than that inmo
On the mac the only thing coming close to topstlye (that i have found) is Coda from panic.

Tim and others:

There is a great favelet letting you see inheritance:
http://www.pixy.cz/pixylophone/favelets/

I agree, Topstyle Pro is the way to go. 

I also use Edit2Plus. 
http://www.editplus.com/