I wish I had had TopStyle in my toolkit the last time I revamped this site. The hours of work it would have saved me!

TopStyle is the bee's knees when it comes to editing cascading style sheets (CSS). If you have a Web site that contains more than a handful of pages and you're not using CSS, you're wasting your time.

With CSS, you can separate the look of your pages from the content. You store all the formatting for headings, page backgrounds, links, sidebars – you name it – in a style sheet and then simply link to that style sheet from your Web pages. If you want to transform the look of your multi-page site, all you do is change the style sheet file. This site, which consists of several hundred pages, uses three style sheets for the menus, articles and screenshot pages. I can change the entire look within minutes, with a style sheet.

Of course, it helps if you have a good style sheet editor, and that's where TopStyle comes in. This style sheet editor from Bradbury Software is the best around. It's one of those programs that seems to respond to your every need with a well-designed tool. It has a built-in preview so you can see how style changes affect the look of your pages and, with the click of a button, you can run your style sheet through a validator and catch all your mistakes. Best of all, it provides support for all the differing implementations of CSS (CSS1, CSS2, Netscape variations, Internet Explorer variations, and so on), so you can design a style sheet that will work with all browser or exploit the strengths of one.

If you'd like to make your Web editing life easier, download the free trial of TopStyle and give it a try. I think you'll love it. While you're at the TopStyle site, make sure you click the little quick-style-change icon that looks like this to see style sheet power in action.

Links:

Bradbury Software

House of Style

Builder.com's Style Sheet Tutorial

Comments

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