Published in Web Development on Thursday, September 9th, 2004
Something for everyone, even the peeps can participate! A reader survey: What software do you use to code up your CSS?
Okay, we're still on haitus, however I'm chiming in with a quick reader survey. Users who do comment, and keep a cookie from this site, will not be subjected (once the reworking is launched) to the Adsense ads that are here now (thanks Simon for the help).
So lets have it, what's helping you build your CSS these days?
Sitepoint's web devlopment books have helped me out on many occasions both for finding a quick solution to a problem but also to level out my knowlegde in weaker areas (JavaScript, I'm looking at you!). I am recommending the following titles from my bookshelf:
I started freelancing by diving in head first and getting on with it. Many years and a lot of experience later I was still able to take away some gems from this book, and there are plenty I wish I had thought of beforehand. If you are new to freelancing and have a lot of questions (or maybe don't know what questions to ask!) do yourself a favor and at least check out the sample chapters.
The author line-up for this book says it all. 7 excellent developers show you how to get your JavaScript coding up to speed with 7 chapters of great theory, code and examples. Metaprogramming with JavaScript (chapter 5 from Dan Webb) really helped me iron out some things I was missing about JavaScript. That said each chapter really helped me to develop my JavaScript skills beyond simple Ajax calls and html insertion with libs like JQuery.
Like the other books listed here, this provides a great reference for the PHP developer looking to have the right answers from the right people at their fingertips. I tend to pull this off the shelf when I need to delve into new territory and usually find a workable solution to keep development moving. This only needs to happen once and you recoup the price of the book in time saved from having to develop the solution or find the right pattern for getting the job done..
Comments and Feedback
CSSEdit by MacRabbit and BBEdit7. If we're talking code, then I use HyperEdit by Tumult.
It's ActiveState's Komodo 3 for me. Although I still fire up TextPad every now and again.
TopStyle Pro is the best Windows based CSS editor out there. Every detail of the GUI is well thought out and the customizable nature of the program is excellent.
UltraEdit-32 at the moment. However, coding inside textarea's is not a very weird thing to me :-)
Homesite 5.x has always been my choice for HTML and CSS editing.
I mostly use whatever text editor I'm using for a particular project (Homesite or Dreamweaver). I have TopStyle, but don't use it much, unless I'm doing batch color pallette changes.
A combination of dreamweaver mx 2004 and topStyle pro. Once the css has moved past the development stage CSS is usually tweaked by hand through a CMS GUI
HyperEdit on OS X
Notepad2 on XP
JEdit cross platform
I use TopStyle Pro, too.
I use BBEdit 8. Plain text just seems to be quicker than any of the GUI apps out there.
I use UltraEdit too. Briefly used TopStyle but for me it couldn't compete with the simplicity of using a bog standard text editor.
BBEdit 7.1
My choice is Crimson Editor. I don't know why, i suppose from habit. I used TopStyle before, but now that i code CSS from my head, it's more easy with just one editor.
My choice for CSS coding/editing? Chris Pederick's Web Developer Extension for FireFox. Use the Edit CSS functionality (Ctrl + Shift + E from My Favourite Firefox Keystrokes) to write/edit/tweak CSS in the sidebar. It basically amounts to WYSIWYG CSS editing, and I'm hooked.
Of course, once I'm done, I copy the CSS I've just authored, save it to the file with a text editor and upload for final cross-browser testing.
Vim. What else is there?
I used SubEthaEdit on my Mac (because it was more "Mac like") until I realized that I was actually more comfortable and efficient in vim.
Crimson Editor. Just a simple text-editor with some nice little features.
Today I use EditPlus on my PC.
Definitely, TopStyle Pro (now 3.11b)
Since version 3 my favourite choice for (X)HTML and CSS tasks.
Whatever basic text editor I happen to have handy or am in the mood for at the time. Peferably one that has good syntax highlighting. I usually use PHP-Dev because it allows me to run php scripts directly from the editor and see the raw output. Why open another editor for css when I can open multiple docs in tabs? When there is no PHP involved, I am most likely to use SciTE.
Wow, look at the peeps comin' out! I had no idea so many options existed. Personally, I am somewhat like Cody. I use Dreamweaver ('03) to mock-up a template and then move into top-style...
Blake, I love Homesite. I never got around to installing on my machine, maybe I shoudl dig up the cd... (I think homesite may be how I came to use Top-Style...)
Mike, homesite is a stripped down version of Dreamweaver MX. If you have MX you are pretty much using homesite. Homesite purists are still using homesite because they see the add features in dreamweaver as more of distraction then a benefit. The reality is dreamweaver is homesite, just with a lot more extra's, or distractions, depending on your perspective
Funny your description, because I remember homesite as being so clean and easy to use. I pretty much hand-code in dreamweaver anyway. I only use it for the file management and sitewide find and replaces etc...
Right, hand coding in homesite is pretty much like hand coding in dreamweaver. Dreamweaver just has more bells and whistles
Macromedia purchased homesite so it could take advantage of it in dreamweaver. If I remember correctly?
Yep, thah's right. And Nick Bradbury, who makes Topstyle, was responsible for homesite...
...So far no votes for Stylemaster?
In my standard editor on the platform, of course. That means SubEthaEdit on the Mac (why oh why can't somebody port SciTE to the Mac?) and SciTE on my PC.
I used Stylemaster in the past. It actually helped a lot to learn CSS, ages ago. And I've been told that the next version will be splendid. I still use it, sometimes, for managing long stylesheets.
Nowadays, it's SubEthaEdit and skEdit all the way. BBedit, due to poor support for Unicode, hasn't been launched for months.
I code in Dreamweaver MX 2004. I use it for everything - CSS, HTML/XHTML, JS, ASP, ASP.NET. It is basically a waste of money and resources, but I've yet to find a text editor which has the same Find and Replace capabilities. Sitewide search and regular expressions rule
If anyone can point me to a program that'll do that (and runs on a PC), please sing out!
StyleMaster, BBEdit 8, and Emacs.
Eclipse 3.0 with CSS Editor and XMLBuddy plugins
It's definitely Notepad++. Light, clean, sober, perfect !
Topstyle Pro for me too
for both CSS and (X)HTML, love it...
Cream for Vim.
Bluefish (currently 0.13) for Linux. I find it is the best Unix/Linux text editor out there for HTML and CSS creation.
On the cross-platform, commercial side, I also like Visual Slickedit - I've currently only got version 6, but it is good for more general work and programming.
In the past I used Top Style. However, I recently switched to Stylemaster. They are both really good programs, but I am a freak when it comes to customizable interfaces. And stylemaster is really customizable.
Dreamweaver MX, because i am not a guro in css design :)
I didn't realise so many people actually used CSS editors. I personally just use a normal non-syntax-highlighting editor.
CTRL+S, ALT+TAB, F5: look at changes, CTRL+TAB back to notepad - Repeat.
I write it nice and legibly on a piece of ruled paper and then scan it in (with OCR).
Aint nothin' but a G-thang baby.
*wink*
I find that I like the styling of Adobe GoLive for CSS and DreamWeaver MX for (X)HTML. Otherwise I'm happy with Notepad if I want to just do it quick and dirty-like.
I use BBEdit 7.1. It just works.
I use UltraEdit 32 because it has good support of Unicode.
This question assumes that you would use a CSS spefic editor, the notion of which strikes me as silly...
I do all my coding, HTML, XHTML, ColdFusion, PHP, CSS or otherwise mostly in Dreamweaver. Tried out jEdit for a while. It's very nice, but I need more time before I could switch to it for production. Dreamweaver makes a lot of things really simple.
I use Chami's HTML-Kit for all my Web Design coding needs: PHP, HTML, CSS. It has built in support for look-up of function names in PHP and CSS specs at W3.org using F1!
A combination of Top Style pro and Dreamweaver MX 2004
TextPad. Handles UTF-8, RegEx and has a MDI. I just cannot live without these basics. ;)
I use TextPad for everything . With all of it's features no other product is required. Although I am impressed with the webdeveloper extension that comes with Firefox (see comment 14 above)