In the early days of the Web, a common complaint was HTML's insufficient control over how a browser would display the layout and appearance of a documentShow full article

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In the early days of the Web, a common complaint was HTML's insufficient control over how a browser would display the layout and appearance of a document. Tricks with tables and font tags helped, but the real solution, which has been emerging gradually for several years, is Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Style sheets let you specify such things as the size of text, the spacing and margins of paragraphs, and the positioning of graphics. Unfortunately, style sheets are complicated to use: the options for different elements can be hard to remember, and worse, different Web browsers support different standards and sometimes support them incorrectly. You can consult a book, code by hand, and test painstakingly; or you can let Style Master make your life easy. Style Master 1.5.1 comes from Western Civilisation; like their Palimpsest (which I reviewed in TidBITS-364) demonstrates clean, original interface design.

<http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS1>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/00752>

Each main window represents a style sheet; you can have multiple style sheets open. You edit style information through dialogs and floating windows where your options are obvious; the results are translated into style sheet syntax and displayed in the main window. The real magic starts when you ask to preview your styles: Style Master displays, in all your open browsers simultaneously, a particular style component (using sample text), or, even better, an entire HTML document of your own, to which it has applied the entire style sheet! Your original HTML is untouched, and Style Master makes a new temporary copy on every preview, so it's easy to tweak and test both your styles and your HTML document. When you're done, Style Master can either add the style sheet link to your original document, ready to serve along with the style sheet itself, or it can embed the style sheet into the document.

There's so much help you could plotz. There's balloon help. There are Help windows explaining each particular aspect of style sheets. There are warnings if you do something that a browser might not support. There is dialog text describing the meaning of selectors as you create them. There is superb documentation (using HTML which itself demonstrates style sheets): a Quickstart that really does get you started quickly, a complete manual, a hands-on tutorial, and a handbook on style sheets. Western Civilisation has also made its Web site a major reference on style sheets, well worth visiting.

<http://www.westciv.com/style_master/house/index _dynamic.html>

Although I have some quibbles with inconvenient interface elements, and the misspellings in the manuals pain me, I still like everything about this program, right down to the clever purchase policy. You download a 2.4 MB time-limited demo (15 days of use, not necessarily consecutive) that you can test and ultimately register either as Style Master or as Style Master Pro. Style Master costs $29; Style Master Pro, unlike any browser known to me, supports the next-generation style sheet standard, CSS2, and costs $39 until 20-Oct-99, $49 thereafter. Style Master requires a Power PC-based Macintosh, System 7.1.2 or later. A full installation is about 7 MB, and it uses 8.5 MB of RAM.

<http://www.westciv.com/style_master/download/ download_ppc.html>
<http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/>

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Western Civilisation Offers Style Master 2.0 -- For webmasters who write their own HTML, Western Civilisation has long been the source of the best instruction and information on the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) protocol, as well as the best utility for editing it, Style Master (see "Precision Web Pages with Style Master" in TidBITS-501)Show full article

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Western Civilisation Offers Style Master 2.0 -- For webmasters who write their own HTML, Western Civilisation has long been the source of the best instruction and information on the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) protocol, as well as the best utility for editing it, Style Master (see "Precision Web Pages with Style Master" in TidBITS-501). Now Style Master has been updated to 2.0. You can open a new style sheet from a template, and Western Civilisation supplies several sample templates. Color coding and find-and-replace have been added to the editor, and Western Civilisation also added support for external editors such as BBEdit, so you can alternate between an overall text-based view and Style Master's own view of individual statements and properties. The browser support information has been updated to include Netscape 6 and Opera 5 (but not, alas, iCab or OmniWeb). There is improved support for comments, @media rules, relative linking, and even CSS3MP (the mobile wireless standard). Style Master 2.0 also claims to parse an existing document that uses the old deprecated "presentational" and "structural" HTML (such as FONT tags and attributes like ALIGN and BGCOLOR) and generate a CSS stylesheet from it; in my testing, though, this feature wasn't robust enough to be useful. Style Master requires Mac OS 8 or higher and 5 MB of RAM on a PowerPC-based Mac. It costs $30, or $50 for the Pro version which includes CSS2 support. A 31-day trial version is available. [MAN]

<http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/>
<http://www.westciv.com/style_master/product_ info/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/05602>

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New Life for Western Civilisation -- Style Master, Western Civilisation's flagship editor for Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), has arrived on Mac OS X with version 3 (see "Precision Web Pages with Style Master" in TidBITS-501 for more details)Show full article

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New Life for Western Civilisation -- Style Master, Western Civilisation's flagship editor for Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), has arrived on Mac OS X with version 3 (see "Precision Web Pages with Style Master" in TidBITS-501 for more details). This is not a mere port or carbonization: the program has been completely rewritten, to brilliant effect. Floating windows and dialogs have been replaced by drawers, colorful toolbar icons have been added, and the whole interface has been made more informative and just plain easier. There are no modal dialogs or even OK buttons: as you work in one window, Style Master updates its other windows on the fly. It even provides live reporting of compatibility between your CSS and a dozen common Web browsers. Style Master 3 is a top-notch example of a program that knows the syntax rules of a complicated markup language and mediates between those rules and a clean, clear interface. As a result, the user can create, edit, and preview CSS-based Web pages with no formal knowledge of CSS whatever. A new online manual and CSS tutorial is included. Style Master 3 costs $50 ($30 to upgrade from an earlier version), and a 30-day demo is available as a 4.3 MB download. [MAN]

<http://www.westciv.com/style_master/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/05602>

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Style Master 3.5 Works Web Site Wizardry -- Western Civilisation's Style Master has long been my favorite application for creating, editing, and previewing Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) in Web pages (see "Precision Web Pages with Style Master" in TidBITS-501)Show full article

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Style Master 3.5 Works Web Site Wizardry -- Western Civilisation's Style Master has long been my favorite application for creating, editing, and previewing Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) in Web pages (see "Precision Web Pages with Style Master" in TidBITS-501). It encapsulates a difficult language in an easy interface; put another way, it knows CSS so you don't have to (although you can certainly use it to edit your CSS directly if you wish). And now, you really don't have to know any CSS, because the version 3.5 includes "wizards".

<http://db.tidbits.com/article/05602>
<http://www.westciv.com/style_master/product_ info/>

A wizard is a dialog sequence; it guides you through choices about how you want your Web pages to look (font, margins, borders, and so forth), and then generates the corresponding CSS and some HTML to illustrate those attributes. And, beyond the level of general page layout, wizards are also included for such common page elements as site navigation bars and "breadcrumbs" (links showing where the user is located within your site). If even wizards are too much trouble, you can just use one of a dozen included pre-built CSS page templates (provided under a Creative Commons license). There is also now built-in page previewing, along with CSS validation within Style Master or online using W3C's validator. Now anyone can set up great-looking, valid CSS-based Web sites in about a minute. Style Master requires Mac OS X 10.0 or higher, and costs $60; this update is $40 for existing owners. A 30-day demo is available as a 5.8 MB download. [MAN]

<http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/1.0/>
<http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/>

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Western Civilisation's flagship product, Style Master, is a CSS editor. You don't use it to create Web pages; you use it to create the look of Web pages - the font, size, color, and layout of the various elements that constitute your Web pages, as dictated though a CSS "style sheet." Style Master is my ideal of a program that knows a big complicated language so that you don't have to; you do see the actual CSS, but you can interact with it through pop-up menus and checkboxes that list the appropriate options and generate the correct syntax. <http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.aShow full article

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Western Civilisation's flagship product, Style Master, is a CSS editor. You don't use it to create Web pages; you use it to create the look of Web pages - the font, size, color, and layout of the various elements that constitute your Web pages, as dictated though a CSS "style sheet." Style Master is my ideal of a program that knows a big complicated language so that you don't have to; you do see the actual CSS, but you can interact with it through pop-up menus and checkboxes that list the appropriate options and generate the correct syntax.

<http://www.westciv.com/style_master/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/05602>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/06555>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/07583>

The big question as you work with CSS is always how your CSS code is reflected in the appearance of an actual page as rendered in a browser. Style Master has always permitted you to preview your style sheet in conjunction with any Web page in any browser; but the new version, 4.0, goes one better. The rendering of a Web page can be previewed in conjunction with your style sheet right in Style Master's own window (the Design Pane), and then, when you click a rule in your style sheet, any regions affected by that rule in the Design Pane preview are highlighted. Furthermore, it works the other way as well: click anywhere in the Design Pane preview rendering, and Style Master tells you whole containment hierarchy of elements for the spot where you clicked, plus it highlights in the style sheet all the rules that govern the appearance of that part of the Web page.

So, now you've no excuse for not generating gorgeous Web pages, gorgeously coded; plus Style Master itself is also more gorgeous than ever, thanks to numerous interface improvements. Style Master 4.0 is a $30 upgrade for current users; a new copy costs $60. A 30-day demo is available for download.

<http://www.westciv.com/style_master/download/>

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Western Civilization has released version 4.5 (quickly updated to 4.5.1) of its flagship CSS editor, Style Master, making the creation of good-looking Web pages easier than everShow full article

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Western Civilization has released version 4.5 (quickly updated to 4.5.1) of its flagship CSS editor, Style Master, making the creation of good-looking Web pages easier than ever. TidBITS has followed the growth and development of Style Master for many years.

<http://www.westciv.com/style_master/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/series/1266>

Changes are minor but useful. For example, previously, CSS statements were listed in the order in which they appeared in your style sheet; this version introduces searching, sorting, and grouping of CSS statements. Gone are the drawers that slid in and out every time you switched from editing one type of CSS statement to another; the editor is now a single floating window. Furthermore, if you know a property's name and usage, you no longer have to hunt among different editor panes for the one containing it, as there is now for the first time an additional editor pane that lists all properties.

There are those of us who wouldn't try to write CSS without Style Master, because its CSS statement editor dialogs guide your hand and head through every possible option so that you end up with perfectly correct CSS. Nevertheless, it's disappointing to find that Style Master's CSS analysis tools, introduced over a year ago in version 4.0, are not significantly improved; I much prefer, for this purpose, the gorgeous and brilliant dedicated CSS/HTML analyser Xyle Scope ($20).

<http://culturedcode.com/xyle/>

Style Master runs on Mac OS X 10.3 or higher, is not yet available as a universal binary (there is also a Windows version), and costs $60. Upgrades from earlier versions cost $30, unless you already paid for the upgrade to version 4.0, in which case this upgrade is free. Users are also requested to pay $20 for each additional computer on which Style Master will be used. A free 30-day demo is available as an 8.5 MB download.

<http://www.westciv.com/westciv/downloads.html>

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