CSSEdit – killer css application

Sergey Kuleshov — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 14:06:00 +0000

I've never really been a big fan of specialized css editing applications, always preferring to stick with a standard editor and some browser plugin like firebug. Now I realize this was just because I never came across a really powerful editor, at least not as powerful and yet friendly as CSSEdit from MacRabbit .

So how does it work? You just load a local file or remote site and open associated CSS files. At this point you have a choice to open a remote css or override it by a local file. Thats it, now you switch to X-Ray mode and study the structure of your page, which is rendered using WebKit engine. All the changes you make in css file are reflected in browser window immediately.

The only downside of this tool is that developers want you to pay for it, but I must say that mere 30 euro is nothing for such a handy tool which would save you lots of time if you seriously do web development.

Testing your site in Internet Explorer under Linux or Mac.

Sergey Kuleshov — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 08:33:00 +0000

When you develop a web site in 9 cases out of 10 you have to ensure that it works and looks properly in all major browsers. While Firefox and Opera is available on all platforms, testing your browser under Internet Explorer might be a bit tricky if your development happens on Linux or Mac. If you are a "happy owner" of a windows license - fair enough, go and in stall it under virtual machine. But what if you don't have a license and aren't quite up to breaking the laws on pirate bay?

Even if you have a copy of windows there is one thing you have to keep in mind - the way Internet Explorer renders pages varies not only between browsers versions but even between OS versions! So, ideally, we want to test our websites in a native environment.

Surprisingly enough, MS gives us a free solution! They provide VirtualPC images for a number IE/Windows combinations. You can attach the VHD images to VirtualBox (as of version 2.0 it supports VirtualPC disk images) or convert them to Parallels Desktop using their Transporter tool. The only trick (yeah, MS did have to screw it up!) is that images are distributed in self-extracting EXE files. So you will need either a windows machine or Wine to unpack 'em.

IE App Compat VHD

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CSSEdit – killer css application

Testing your site in Internet Explorer under Linux or Mac.