An intelligent css editor - I'm in love.

Over the past month or so I have begun using Visual Studio and while their are some quirks I'm not happy about, I find it to be an excellent development environment. This week I used it in an entirely different way, and found even more to love about it.

This week I began work on a new intranet project. In the past when I've created css files I've used Note Pad or the Websphere development environment. This time I was copying and modifying a css that came from my client and was stored in a Domino Page. Visual Studio was already loaded so I decided to copy the css from the Domino Page and paste it into a Visual Studio  file. It turns out that Visual Studio has a Style Sheet file type, so I created a blank one and then pasted the code into it.

Not only was the code color-coded, but I Visual Studio also provides a navigation structure for the code. When you create a Style Sheet using Visual Studio you also get a CSS Outline. The top level of the outline is the Style Sheet. On the next level there are sections for Elements, Classes, Element IDs and @Blocks. When you expand one of the section you see its contents and clicking on one of the elements or classes scrolls the css file and places your cursor over the class or element name. This is really nice especially when working with a large style sheet.

In addition to the color-coding and the navigation structure you also get in-line help while typing in your code. Type in your class, element name, etc. press enter, and a popup box appears with an alphabetized list of properties. Start typing, and the list scrolls to the first entry that matches what you've typed so far. In addition, a hint pops up with a brief description of the property selected. This is great, now I don't need to grab my doorstop of a DHTML book to look up syntax, or go on-line to Microsoft's MSDN website. I have the help I need right at my finger tips. I hope that IBM/Lotus will take a look at this and build something as good or better in its next generation "Domino Designer". If not, then I'll just keep using Visual Studio.

Comment posted by Stephan H. Wissel06/25/2006 08:35:12 PM
Homepage: http://www.wissel.net

Hi Carolyn,
did you have a look at the various CSS plug-ins available for Eclipse? (My personal bet is, that Domino Designer will be a Eclipse plug-in sooner or later). I personally use Topstyle Pro (http://www.bradsoft.com/ ) which in addition allows to see in what browser the CSS would work.
stw

Comment posted by Carolyn Kraut06/25/2006 08:35:12 PM

Hi Stephan -
Topstyle Pro looks very interesting. Thanks for the tip. I think the future of Domino in general aligns it with Eclipse, but if the Designer becomes an Eclipse plug-in down the road, I doubt it will be anything like the current Domino Designer.

Lotusphere is just around the corner, maybe we'll know more after its over.