Style Master: Complex CSS Coding Made Easy Portland OR

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Originally published at Internet.com

Using Cascading Style Sheets to lay out a Web page can be a little complicated. Just placing a navigation bar and content box can sometimes get downright difficult. While a few of the WYSIWYG HTML editors provide visual CSS authoring, many Web designers prefer to code by hand. And many of the WYSIWYG editors that do offer CSS tools lack extensive CSS authoring capabilities.

Designed to work along side your current HTML/CSS editor, Style Master (formerly called Layout Master) can help solve the problem. It's a powerful editing tool from the creators of Style Master CSS Editor that's designed to aid in the creation of standards-based XHTML and CSS Web pages.

To paraphrase from the program's manual, using Style Master is pretty straightforward. It's basically a matter of adding elements to a page, dragging them where you want them, and then stretching and shrinking them as desired. While there are editors within the program to fine tune the code, the app will also work with your current HTML and CSS editor, even while you are working within Style Master.

A short yet comprehensive tutorial is included with the software and will have you up and running in no time. Within a half hour of using the tutorial, I was able to create a Web page (at right) with a fixed background image (the image doesn't scroll as the page does), a header across the top with a plain white background, a navigation bar at the top and bottom (the bottom one is fixed), a center box with text, and a text-filled box on the left-hand side surrounded by graphics. The page won't win any design awards, but it does show how Style Master can help make page layouts a little easier. The HTML and CSS code also properly validated.

Handling CSS Coding with Ease

In proper coding technique, HTML is used for the document's structure and CSS is used for the content. To aid in this, Style Master works as the "go-between." If you begin the document using Style Master, it will set up a basic HTML structure on the page, but you'll need to tighten-up a few things ? i.e., add meta name and content tags. Remember, the purpose of the program is not to write HTML; rather, Web designers will typically use Style Master to add, move, and fine tune the elements on existing pages. You can tell Style Master to put the CSS code in an external style sheet, embed it in the current page, or treat it as an inline element. You can even use a combination of any of these.

The program opens with the Layout Window (shown at right). The layout work is done on the left-hand side. There are several property editors on the right side for editing the different properties of the elements and the page itself. If the use of a particular property will cause a problem due to browser incompatibility, a warning is given and an explanation is available as to the nature of the problem.

The property editors assist in the editing of the location of an element, its background and border, and content. Portions of the page itself can also be edited (the title, DTD, and background, for example).

Text and graphics can be placed on the page by cutting-and-pasting or by importing them into Style Master. If you have an existing HTML-coded document, it can be inserted right into the page (you won't need the header portion). You can then drag it where you want it. If the content is too large for the size of the element, you can either re-size it or change the overflow property of the element using the Overflow Editor. Using the editor, you decide how the overflow portion of the text is to be displayed. If desired, it's very simple to make a scrolling window with the element.

Style Master can be an aid to valid CSS page creation. It won't do all of your work for you, but it can help make the layout process a little easier. Web designers generally work with an arsenal of tools in the creation of Web sites. Think of Style Master as another one of those tools for the collection.

Style Master is available, without restrictions, as a 30-day demo. The price for the full version is $49.99; it also comes bundled with Style Master CSS Editor for $89.99. The software is available for Windows (95/98/ME/NT4+/2000/XP). While no longer updated, a mac version is also available (see the Web site).

Review adapted from WebReference