007 Design: 12/21/08

We love useful stuff. For months, we have been bookmarking
interesting, useful and creative CSS tools and related resources. We have been
contacting developers, encouraging them to improve their tools and release their
handy little apps to the public. Last year we prepared and published some of
them in a series
of smashing posts about CSS. Now again is the time to give these tools the
attention they deserve. Big thanks to all designers and developers who
contributed to the design community over the last months and years. We — our
community and the design community — truly appreciate your efforts.

Below, we present 50 extremely useful CSS tools, generators,
templates and resources. We did not include “traditional” CSS tools,
such as Firebug or the href="http://chrispederick.com/work/web-developer/">Web Developer extension,
but tried to focus on rather unknown tools that are definitely worth a look.
Some tools are new and some are old, but hopefully everybody will find a couple
of new useful or at least inspiring tools.

We strongly encourage you to develop these tools further, build on the ideas
presented here, release new tools for the public and let us know about them. We
would love to feature your handy tool in our next review.

Please take a look at the following related posts:

href="http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/02/21/powerful-css-techniques-for-effective-coding/">Powerful
CSS-Techniques For Effective Coding
href="http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/01/19/53-css-techniques-you-couldnt-live-without/">53
CSS Techniques You Couldn’t Live Without
href="http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2006/10/25/css-techniques-tutorials-layouts/">CSS:
Techniques, Tutorials, Layouts
href="http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/09/11/75-really-useful-javascript-techniques/">75
(Really) Useful JavaScript Techniques

CSS and Typography

href="http://code.google.com/p/hyphenator/">Hyphenator
Hyphenator.js
brings client-side hyphenation of HTML documents to every browser by inserting
soft hyphens using hyphenation patterns and Frank M. Liang’s hyphenation
algorithm commonly known from LaTeX and OpenOffice. The goal is to provide
hyphenation in all browsers that support JavaScript and the soft hyphen for at
least English, German and French. href="http://yellowgreen.de/hyphenation-in-web/">Here is the server-side script
that does the hyphenation.
CSS Type Set
CSS Type Set is a
hands-on typography tool that allows designers and developers to interactively
test and learn how to style their Web content.
src="http://88.198.60.17/images/useful-css-tools/typeset.gif" width=502>
Typechart
Typechart lets you flip
through, preview and compare Web typography while retrieving the CSS.
src="http://78.46.108.98/images/useful-css-tools/tc.jpg" width=500>
CSS-Typoset
Matrix and code generator
A matrix table that presents font sizes and
(symmetrical and asymmetrical) margins for various base font sizes — in pixel
and em units. It also generates the source code on the fly. Created by Jan
Quickels.
Em Calculator
Em Calculator is a
small JavaScript tool that helps you make scalable and accessible CSS design. It
converts sizes in pixels to relative em units, which are based on a given text
size.
src="http://88.198.60.17/images/useful-css-tools/emc.gif" width=500>
Facelift Image Replacement
(FLIR)
Facelift Image Replacement (or FLIR, pronounced “fleer”) is an
image replacement script that dynamically generates image representations of
text on your Web page in fonts that might otherwise not be visible to your
visitors. Written by Cory Mawhorter. href="http://nettuts.com/javascript-ajax/how-to-use-any-font-you-wish-with-flir/">How
To Use Any Font With FLIR: Tutorial.
href="http://www.jameswhittaker.com/blog/article/em-based-layouts-vertical-rhythm-calculator/">Vertical
rhythm calculator
This tool converts pixel values to em values depending
on the font size of the text. You can also set margins and paddings
automatically, depending on the line height you’ve defined. Very useful.

href="http://www.jameswhittaker.com/blog/article/em-based-layouts-vertical-rhythm-calculator/">height=315 alt=Screenshot
src="http://78.46.108.98/images/best-of-january08/csst.png" width=413>
typeface.js
Instead of just
creating images or using Flash to show your website’s graphic text in the font
you want, you can use typeface.js and write in plain HTML and CSS, just as if
your visitors had the font installed locally.

CSS Online Tools

PSD2CSS Online
A free online
service that generates Web pages from Photoshop designs. By following the href="http://psd2cssonline.com/node/128">guidelines and naming conventions,
you can precisely choose how the transformation from PSD to (X)HTML and
CSS is done.
href="http://www.conditional-css.com/">Conditional-CSS
Conditional-CSS
allows you to write maintainable CSS with conditional logic to target specific
CSS statements for both individual browsers and groups of browsers.

src="http://88.198.60.17/images/useful-css-tools/cond.gif" width=469>
MoreCSS
MoreCSS is a
design-oriented JavaScript library that allows you to write code for applying
automatic hyphenation and creating pop-ups, tool tips, tab menus, zebra tables,
advanced list styling and cross-browser opacity style. But the really special
thing is that you can do these things as you would with regular CSS.
px to em
This tool is what its
developers call “px to em conversion made simple”. Type a base font size in
pixels, and the tool will produce a complete pixel to em conversion table,
making elastic Web design much easier to produce.
CSS Frame Generator
This
tool returns corresponding CSS in a line-by-line way indented with spaces to
reflect XHTML structure - each selector and all of its properties and values in
one line. This may be a bit strange for you at the beginning, but if you get
used to it you’ll find it much better.
alt="CSS Frame Generator"
src="http://78.46.108.98/images/useful-css-tools/framegen.jpg" width=500>
CSS Redundancy
Checker
You can use this tool to find CSS selectors that aren’t used by
any of your HTML files and that may be redundant.
CleverCSS
CleverCSS is
a small markup language for CSS, and inspired by Python, that can be used to
build a style sheet in a clean and structured way. In many ways, it’s cleaner
and more powerful than CSS2. You can also work with variables.
WordOff
WordOff applies some rules to
strip the cruft that is pasted into WYSIWYG editors from Word. For example,
attributes are removed for all elements except <a>, <span> and
<div>, empty elements are removed and consecutive line breaks are reduced
to two. It also contains an API.

src="http://88.198.60.17/images/useful-css-tools/word.gif" width=505>
Postable
“I absolutely
hate having to switch all the ‘< ‘ and ‘>’ signs in my code to ‘<’ and
‘>,’ respectively. I also hate having to write “&” any time I want to
include an ampersand. It makes including code snippets on my blog and whatnot
extremely annoying, and today I finally got fed up.” This handy tool is a little
app that will do all that for you. Created by Elliot Swan.

src="http://78.46.108.98/images/useful-css-tools/postable.jpg" width=500>
href="http://www.askthecssguy.com/kotatsu/index.html">Kotatsu
Kotatsu is
a simple HTML table generator. The tool lets you attach classes to cells in the
same column easily.

alt=Kotatsu src="http://88.198.60.17/images/useful-css-tools/kot.gif"
width=364>
href="http://code.google.com/p/htmldevelopertools/">htmldevelopertools
This
tool allows you to update your CSS files on the server in a browser window.
Currently works only under IIS + .NET 3.5. An interesting idea. Could someone
create a similar script for Apache? Let us know, and we’ll support your both
financially and with the broad coverage of our magazine.

alt=htmldevelopertools
src="http://78.46.108.98/images/useful-css-tools/devtools.gif" width=465>
Deploy
Deploy is a free
open-source Web application that allows you to choose the name of a project, the
Doctype, whether you want a CSS reset or jQuery integration, and it creates a
zipped, ready-to-use package with all specified files and folders. The tool has
been optimized for Fluid, the Mac application
that creates SSBs (site-specific browsers) for websites.

src="http://88.198.60.17/images/useful-css-tools/deploy.jpg" width=500>
CSS Evolve
CSSEvolve
lets you play with many properties of a website, including the website’s color
scheme, fonts, borders and more. CSSEvolve works through a process of simulated
evolution in which you select website features that you like and refine them
through multiple generations.”It uses a traditional blind watchmaker,
user-driven genetic algorithm to drive CSS changes on a website of the user’s
choosing. Basically, a set of mutated CSS variants are produced, the user
selects changes that he or she likes, the algorithm randomly combines those
changes through crossover and mutation and the process continues.” [ href="http://somanyschemes.com/2008/11/26/cssevolve-guided-stylesheet-evolution/">via
]
Lorem 2
This tool provides you with an
“all around better Lorem experience.” It contains short paragraphs, long
paragraphs, short list items and long list items to use in your wireframes.
href="http://penguin.theopalgroup.com/cgi-bin/css3explainer/selectoracle.py">SelectORacle
A
small script that explains CSS selectors in plain English or Spanish.
Particularly useful for CSS3 selectors.
JS Bin
A Web app specifically designed to
help JavaScript and CSS folk test snippets of code in a particular context and
debug the code collaboratively. It allows you to edit and test JavaScript and
HTML (reloading the URL also maintains the state of your code: new tabs don’t).
Once you’re happy, you can save and send the URL to a peer for review or help.
They can then make further changes, saving anew if required. Alternative: href="http://paste.bradleygill.com/">CodePaste or href="http://etherpad.com/">EtherPad.
src="http://www.drweb.de/magazin/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/jsbin-1225736869.gif">
CSS Text Wrapper
The CSS Text
Wrapper allows you to easily make HTML text wrap in shapes other than just a
rectangle. You can make text wrap around curves, zig-zags, or whatever you want.

src="http://78.46.108.98/images/best-of-january08/tw.png" width=371>
Writing Tests
Against CSS
CSS is hard to test automatically. Do font sizes meet
expectations? Does the layout width correspond to the initial mockup? This tool
helps you spot changes in unexpected areas of a website’s layout and design. It
can also extract rendered DOM values, such as text size, from a given Web page
and compare them against expected values. This could be useful for both
regression testing and assertion-based, test-driven development. Written in
Python by Gareth Rushgrove.
CSS Sprite
Generator
With this tool, you can upload all of your images (you have to
place them in a .zip file first) and it will combine the uploaded images into a
single sprite and generate the CSS for you.
Sky CSS Tool
An online
CSS authoring tool, Sky CSS allows you to create CSS classes almost without
using handwritten code. A JavaScript-compatible browser is needed for proper
functioning.
CSS
Tidy Online
An online version of CSS Tidy, a tool that allows you to keep
your code clean by compressing the code.
href="http://sixrevisions.com/css/css_code_optimization_formatting_validation/">Web-Based
Tools for Optimizing, Formatting and Checking CSS
A huge compilation of
some of the best free Web-based CSS optimizers/compressors, code formatters and
validation services. By Jacob Gube.
Grid Designer 2.4
This tool
enables you to create a grid by specifying the number of columns and the widths
of the columns, gutters and margins. You can also specify typography in the same
tool and export the final CSS and (X)HTML markup. You can also bookmark your
grid and typography settings and create designs with spanning columns. Created
by Rasmus Schultz.

src="http://88.198.60.17/images/useful-css-tools/mind.gif" width=499>
Yahoo’s
Secret Text-Sprite Generator
Basically this is a URL you can hit that
creates a perfect sprite-ready PNG graphic of text you add to the URL.
Replace CSS Colors -
Editor
This tool enables you to change the entire color scheme of your
website without going through the CSS code. You choose your local CSS file,
replace colors and then download the new CSS file.
The Box Office
The Box Office
lets you wrap, float or contour text around free-form images using CSS for
(X)HTML pages.
href="http://blog.base42.nl/2008/11/20/minifyme-a-minimizer-for-css-and-javascript/">MinifyMe
A
small AIR application that can compress multiple CSS and JavaScript files into
one and runs on your desktop.

href="http://blog.base42.nl/2008/11/20/minifyme-a-minimizer-for-css-and-javascript/">height=201 alt=MinifyMe
src="http://78.46.108.98/images/useful-css-tools/min.jpg" width=500>
cssdoc
CSSDOC is a convention for
commenting in CSS to help individuals and teams to improve writing, coding,
styling and managing CSS files. It is an adoption of the well known
JavaDoc/DocBlock-based way of commenting in source code by putting style,
DocBlocks and tags together.
CSS Menu
Generator
This tool generates vertical, horizontal and drop-down menus
online. Various color schemes are available, and you can also customize the
menus online.
sheetUp - DOM Stylesheet
Library
Simplify the tedious task of manipulating style sheets contained
in document.styleSheets. You can use the href="javascript:var%20scr=document.createElement('script');scr.setAttribute('src','http://templateed.com/ted2.js');document.body.appendChild(scr);void(0);">sheetup
bookmarklet to integrate a built-in CSS/HTML-editor in your browser.
CSS SuperScrub
This tool
claims to significantly reduce the size and complexity of your CSS by
programmatically stripping unneeded content, stripping redundant calls and
intelligently grouping the remaining element names.
DrawAble Markup Language
Drawter Beta 2
gives you the possibility of literally drawing your website’s code. It runs on
every single Web browser, which makes it really useful and helpful. Each tag is
presented as a layer you have drawn.

src="http://88.198.60.17/images/best-of-january08/dra.png" width=330>

Handy Kits For Designing With CSS

href="http://superfluousbanter.org/archives/2008/08/regex-patterns-for-single-line-css/">Regex
Patterns for Single Line CSS
If you are formatting your CSS style sheets
single-line, you may find Dan Rubin’s Textmate macro useful and helpful. “This
macro retains a single blank line where your original contained two or more
blank lines (helpful if you group your rules) and adds white space that matches
my standard formatting preferences (which I find makes it easier to scan
quickly).” And if you don’t use Textmate, you can use a regular expression
instead; it is also provided in the post.

href="http://superfluousbanter.org/archives/2008/08/regex-patterns-for-single-line-css/">height=200 alt="Regular Expressions"
src="http://78.46.108.98/images/useful-css-tools/regex.gif" width=500>
href="http://speckyboy.com/2008/10/07/21-excellent-dreamweaver-extensions-for-css-productivity-and-standards/">21
Excellent Dreamweaver Extensions for CSS Productivity and Standards
An
extensive overview of various Dreamweaver extensions, such as CSS Sculptor, CSS
Menu Writer, Link Fader, CSS Layouts, Format Table, Style Switcher, etc.
Graph Paper
This graph
paper is made for visual designers, interactive designers and information
architects. You’ll find styles for wireframing user interfaces, storyboarding
interaction and plotting values on a two-by-two grid. Plus, you’ll get a basic
grid for drafting sitemaps or anything else that might come up.
Starter Kit For Developers
(PSD)
This starter kit is a free Photoshop template that includes forms,
grids, ad placeholders, dummy copy and other design elements (13 MB).
href="http://nb.io/hacks/csshttprequest/">CSSHttpRequest
CSSHttpRequest
(CHR) is a method for cross-domain AJAX, using CSS for transport. Similar to
JavaScript, this works because CSS is not subject to the same-origin policy that
affects XMLHttpRequest. Like JSONP, CSSHttpRequest is limited to making GET
requests. Unlike JSONP, untrusted third-party JavaScript cannot execute in the
context of the calling page.

In-Browser CSS Tools

href="http://www.klauskomenda.com/archives/2008/02/16/collection-of-web-developer-tools-per-browser/">Collection
of Web Developer Tools, by Browser
Sometimes it is not easy to keep track
which tools are at a developer’s disposal (and which ones are actually useful).
This article lists the best tools available and quickly describes how to
activate, install and use them.

href="http://www.klauskomenda.com/archives/2008/02/16/collection-of-web-developer-tools-per-browser/">height=388 alt=Screenshot
src="http://88.198.60.17/images/best-of-april-2008/kla.jpg" width=473>

In-Browser CSS Tools: Firefox Extensions

Dust-Me
Selectors
A Firefox extension (for v1.5 or later) that finds unused CSS
selectors. It extracts all of the selectors from all of the style sheets on the
page you’re viewing, then analyzes that page to see which of those selectors are
not used. The data is then stored so that when testing subsequent pages,
selectors can be crossed off the list as they’re encountered.
Aardvark Firefox
Extension
With Aardvark, you can: clean up unwanted banners and
surrounding “fluff,” especially prior to printing a page; see how a page is
created, block by block; and view the source code of one or more elements.
href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2104">CSSViewer
A
CSS property viewer that displays all information about a design element.
Dummy
Lipsum
This Firefox extension dynamically fills a selected field with
Lorem ipsum text; the function is called via the context menu.
href="http://www.drweb.de/magazin/firefox-test-und-entwicklungstools-fur-webentwickler/">Firefox:
Test- und Entwicklungstools fÃ¼r Webentwickler | Dr. Web Magazin
GridFox
GridFox
is a Firefox extension that overlays a grid on any website. If you can open it
in Firefox, you can put a grid on top of it. It’s easy to customize and allows
you to create the exact grid you based your layout on.

alt=Screenshot src="http://78.46.108.98/images/best-of-april-2008/gridfox.jpg"
width=450>
href="http://www.noupe.com/tools/20-firefox-add-ons-to-enhance-your-web-development.html">20
Firefox Add-Ons To Enhance Your Web-Development
Yet another overview of
useful Firefox add-ons that can help developers create websites more
efficiently. Among them are href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1002">Codetch, href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7943">Pixel Perfect, href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/532">Link Checker and
ColorZilla.

Coding and Programming With CSS

CSS Extra
Coda Plug-in
CSS Extra is a plug-in for Coda that gives you access to
some dynamic CSS. Although it is not truly dynamic in that it
will not force Coda to process the variables and settings, it gives you the
commands to process the CSS instead. What this means is that you can have
constants, bases and a layout module within your CSS.
Edit in Place with
JavaScript and CSS
This tool offers you more intuitive editing (in-place
editing) of your documents and style sheets. The idea: in a selected area, the
user can enter the markup or change the current value directly.
Simple CSS
Simple CSS is a free
CSS editor that runs on Mac, Windows and Linux. It allows you to create CSS from
scratch and modify existing sheets, using a familiar point-and-click interface.
Freeware.
AWK
AWK is
a very powerful programming language that you can use on the command line for
advanced text processing.
cssutils
A Python
package for parsing and building CSS.
src="http://88.198.60.17/images/useful-css-tools/scss.gif" width=375>
RESTful
CSS
A new method for organizing CSS that better maps on to the way that
popular Web application frameworks are built. The examples are based on Ruby on
Rails, but the concepts should be easily transferrable to other MVC frameworks.
By Steve Heffernan.
alt="RESTful CSS" src="http://78.46.108.98/images/useful-css-tools/rb.gif"
width=401>

New CSS Frameworks

CSS Drop-Down Menu
Framework
A cross-browser, modular framework that contains 14
customizable templates for designing drop-down-menus.
BlueTripCSS Framework
A full featured
and beautiful CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) framework which combined the best of
Blueprint, Tripoli (hence the name), Hartija’s print stylesheet, 960.gs’s
simplicity, and Elements’ icons, and has now found a life of its own. The
framework contains 24-column grid, sensible typography styles, clean form
styles, a print styleshet, an empty starter stylesheet, sexy buttons and status
message styles.
Hartija - CSS Print
Framework
Hartija is a CSS print framework that attempts to unite the
best CSS printing practices into one single CSS file.
AM framework
This framework
contains six basic templates: for fixed, fluid, one-column, two-column and
three-column layouts, as well as a jQuery template.
href="http://kilianvalkhof.com/2008/css-xhtml/introducing-sencss/">Introducing
SenCSS
A clean, minimal CSS template for new projects.
Typogridphy
Typogridphy
is a CSS framework constructed to allow Web designers and front-end developers
to quickly code typograhically pleasing grid layouts.
href="http://code.google.com/p/formy-css-framework/">formy-css-framework
A
CSS Framework for better form management.
emastic
Emastic is a CSS
Framework. Its continuing mission: “to explore a strange new world, to seek out
new life and new Web spaces, to boldly go where no CSS framework has gone
before.”

CSS Bookmarklets

Design
Bookmarklet
Design is a suite of Web design and development tools that
can be used on any Web page. Encompassing utilities for grid layout, measurement
(rule) and alignment (unit, crosshair), Design is a powerful and useful
JavaScript bookmarklet.
ReCSS: Reload your
CSS
This little bookmarklet makes refreshing your CSS a breeze. It comes
in quite handy when you’re developing dynamic applications. Tested in IE and
Firefox.
XRAY
A bookmarklet for
Internet Explorer 6+ and Webkit- and Mozilla-based browsers (including Safari,
Firefox, Camino and Mozilla). You can use it to see the box model of any element
on any Web page.
MRI
MRI is a bookmarklet for
Internet Explorer 6+ and Webkit- and Mozilla-based browsers (including Safari,
Firefox, Camino and Mozilla). You can use it to debug and test selectors.
CSSFly
A tool for editing websites
easily, directly and in real-time in your browser.
href="http://www.webresourcesdepot.com/15-must-have-bookmarklets-for-web-designers-and-developers">15
Must-Have Bookmarklets For Web Designers And Developers
An extensive list
of 15 handy Web designer and developer bookmarklets. The whole pack can be
downloaded and imported into Firefox.

Tools For Generating CSS Layouts

Construct Your CSS
A
visual layout editor based on Blueprint and jQuery. A href="http://www.constructyourcss.com/tutorial.html">video tutorial is
available as well. You can use the keyboard to create layouts on the fly. By
Christian Montoya.
XHTML/CSS Markup
Generator
Markup Generator is a simple tool created for XHTML and CSS
coders who are tired of writing boring frame code as they just begin slicing
work. Its main purpose is to speed up your work by generating (X)HTML markup and
a CSS frame out of very intuitive, shortened syntax, so that you can jump
directly to the styling of elements.

alt="Markup Generator" src="http://88.198.60.17/images/useful-css-tools/mg.gif"
width=497>
Dynamic Layout Generator
This
tool generates cross-browser multi-column liquid designs and
enables you to visually change the width and colors. You can drag the sliders to
choose the width you want in your layout and preview the layout online. The CSS
code is generated automatically.
iStylr - Online CSS Template
Generator
An advanced WYSIWIG online CSS-editor with syntax highlighting,
drag’n'drop-functionality, template import/export, image manager, stylsheet
sharing option and a visual DOM tree. A registration is required (OpenID-login
is supported).
src="http://78.46.108.98/images/useful-css-tools/ist.gif" width=500>

Blank CSS Layouts

href="http://www.strictlycss.com/articles/article/40/the-only-css-layout-you-need">The
Only CSS Layout You Need
A collection of basic cross-browser layouts.
href="http://www.code-sucks.com/css%20layouts/faux-css-layouts/">Faux-Column CSS
Layouts
There are a total of 42 faux-column CSS layouts for downloading.
All markup has been validated against a strict Doctype.

height=285 alt="Faux Column CSS Layouts"
src="http://88.198.60.17/images/useful-css-tools/fw.gif" width=492>
href="http://www.code-sucks.com/css%20layouts/fixed-width-css-layouts/">Fixed-Width
CSS Layouts
There are a total of 53 fixed-width CSS layouts for
downloading. All markup has been validated against a strict Doctype.

href="http://www.code-sucks.com/css%20layouts/fixed-width-css-layouts/">height=286 alt="Fixed Width CSS Layouts"
src="http://78.46.108.98/images/useful-css-tools/fw2.jpg" width=502>
___layouts
The
foundational ___layouts file offers five preset page widths, the option to have
a fixed width or a text “zoom”-style scaling effect and two core templates that
give you the ability to nest subdivided regions of one to four columns. The
framework supports fluid-width layouts and fixed-width layouts.

CSS Layouts

href="http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/12/01/100-free-high-quality-xhtmlcss-templates/">100
Free High-Quality XHTML/CSS Templates
In this post, we showcase 100 free
high-quality templates. Hopefully, some of them will save you some time in your
design and development. While they are generally free for personal or commercial
use, always remember to check the license first for any restrictions or
guidelines.
href="http://dzineblog.com/2008/07/45-excellent-free-web-templates.html">45
Excellent Free Web Templates

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

service

devel

bonus (free points)

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Monday, December 22, 2008

CSS and Typography

CSS Online Tools

Handy Kits For Designing With CSS

In-Browser CSS Tools

In-Browser CSS Tools: Firefox Extensions

Coding and Programming With CSS

New CSS Frameworks

CSS Bookmarklets

Tools For Generating CSS Layouts

Blank CSS Layouts

CSS Layouts

Most Popular

The Best of Design Search

BEST Of The Web

Design Tools

My Blog List

Web Resource Site

Smashing Magazine » Developer’s Toolbox

Subscription Links

DC007 shared items

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