If you’ve read Dan Wellman's introductory series on XUL, you’ll know that there are better uses for your humble text editor than creating stylesheets. The move from Notepad to a dedicated CSS editor will increase your output and give you an advanced environment in which to develop more complicated and effective stylesheets.
Super Styling with a Dedicated CSS Editor - Rapid CSS and Style Studio (Page 5 of 6 )
Rapid CSS 2004 ($19.85) has a very intense Windows application kind of feel to it; you could be forgiven for thinking it was included with the latest release of Office. It offers full support for CSS 2 and CSS Mobile. Although a little overwhelming for simple CSS creation, it is easy to get into and begin producing high quality CSS files almost immediately. Anyone who’s used a Microsoft application will feel right at home.
Rapid CSS Overview
It’s not just a CSS editor; it provides support for a wide range of document types, including HTML/XHTML, XML, PHP, ASP, JavaScript and more, and is even integrated with HTML tidy (a popular application plugin for validating and cleaning HTML and XHTML). There are a number of templates you can use and the support side of the application is fantastic and includes, reference files and online support. All in all, this is an excellent application and is well recommended. You get a 50 uses trial, and the full application is a bargain at just $19.85.
Style Studio 3 ($49.99) is an award winning CSS editor that acts and looks very similar to Rapid CSS, although it contains even more functionality and looks a little bit nicer.
Style Studio Overview
It does however cost more than double, at $49.99. Nevertheless it is very easy to use and can be used to produce compliant HTML/XHTML documents in addition to CSS. As well as having HTML tidy integration, it also features IntelliStyle which targets specific browsers and validates against all rules that are allowed in the specified target browser.
Style Studio Intellistyle
The main window features an integrated CSS validator and output viewer that pick up on CSS errors immediately.
Style Studio CSS Validator
An explorer style class viewer lets you quickly see what classes, IDs, and selectors among other things are defined. There are several wizards that help you quickly apply common styles and a series of templates allow you to quickly create a number of preinstalled documents. There is also a range of tools that developers will embrace, such as the code compressor that tidies a long and unwieldy CSS file into a compact, manageable set of rules. Both beginners and professionals will enjoy using this application and those that can afford to shell out for it should do so.