There have been several companies that try to mesh css editors with html editors with toaster ovens, but none of them seem to really innovate the field. I find myself using TextMate to write all my html, CSS Edit to manipulate my CSS, Firefox to debug any javascript, and photoshop to do all my image manipulation.
I understand that there are products out there like dreamweaver that attempt to merge several of those things together, but for all their value add, they seem to make life equally difficult in some other unforeseen way. My ideal CSS editor would play well with all the above tools, but do a little integration too. If I want to add images to my site, i have to generate PNGs if i don’t know why my background color is going to be, and then when i’m ready to deploy i have to make jpgs and re-write all my html or css to use the new images. Heaven forbid if I want to re-size multiple elements on one PSD, i’ll have to find the photoshop file, then make my changes and save to a web format, wash, rinse repeat.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if i could have a regular html and css web page where I could embed PSD images and edit them in the view. Resizing, changing text, or maybe even (ghasp) setting image colors to grab their value from a css selector. (So setting all jpg background colors to the same background color of <body>). Then at the end of it you could click export and the editor could spit out your images as a png if necessary, or a jpg if possible (for size).
Obviously even cooler would be if this program could then put all your images into css sprite form and generate your CSS for you, but that would be asking a little too much. While my dream may not be realized anytime soon, if anyone has any killer CSS and image integration tips/techniques that saves a ton of time in their work flow, let me know in the comments. Till then CSS Edit is about as close to perfect as you can get, though it looks like they haven’t added any new features in years (if you’re listening CSS edit, i want plug-ins for php/rails/etc. ).
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Have you checked out Coda? I’m a huge fan of TextMate for writing code, but for making websites, Coda is awesome.
Also, some of the stuff you’re looking for may possible with the new Webkit Inspector. (WebKit is the open-source project that Safari is based on.) Here’s a good blog post about the new features. A new version of WebKit is pushed every night, and you can download the builds here.
-mg
PS: If you like using OS X’s color picker, this plugin is great for getting hex values.
Hey, i checked out coda, i liked the interface, but i can safely say that the CSS editor is no where near that of CSS-Edit. Maybe if a copy comes up on macHeist, i’ll get it. Thanks again for the heads up.
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