Smashing Magazine - we smash you with the information that will make your life easier. really.

List of CSS Tools

Advertisement

What can be better than simple, useful and handy tools you can use “on the fly” in the development process? Whether you’d like to test font size, generate online-forms, create rollover-navigation, create a slide-show, format CSS code or optimize your code – you can use dozens of tools to make your life easier.

We’ve collected them. At least most of them, and compiled them in a brief and precise overview. And here what we’ve come out with – most useful CSS-Tools you can use developing tableless web-sites.
Links checked: May/14 2008.

[Offtopic: by the way, did you know that Smashing Magazine has one of the most influential and popular Twitter accounts? Join our discussions and get updates about useful tools and resources — follow us on Twitter.]

Fonts

Forms

Layout

Navigation

  • Colly’s CSS rollover generator
    CollyLogic CSS Multi-element Rollover Generator
  • CSS Tab Designer
    CSS Tab Designer is a unique and easy to use software to help you design css-based lists and tabs visually and without any programming knowledge required!
  • Listamatic
    not a tool but very useful! – one list, many options – Using CSS and a simple list to create radically different list
  • Listamatic2
    nested list options
  • List-O-Matic
    Generate CSS-styled navigation menus based on list items
  • List-O-Rama!
    Dreamweaver MX and UltraDev Zone – List-O-Rama will allow you to generate nice CSS inline menus in seconds
  • CSS Menu Generator
    CSS Menu Generator will generate both the CSS and the HTML code required to produce a text-based yet appealing set of navigation buttons.

Misc Tools

  • CSS Love Child
    The Man in Blue Experiment – I want the body of Site [...] with the face of site [...]
  • CSSVista
    CSSVista is a free Windows application for web developers which lets you edit your CSS code live in both Internet Explorer and Firefox simultaneously……
  • HTML and CSS Table Border Style Wizard
    Use this wizard to experiment with table border styles and generate style source code.
  • I Like Your Colors!
    Use this tool to extract the colors from the HTML and CSS of any web site. Compare the colors easily using hue groups.
  • Online CSS Scrollbar Color Changer
    Change the scrollbar colors in an HTML page
  • S5Easy: Create S5 Slideshows Easy Online
    Create your slideshow in only 3 steps
  • Spanky Corners
    ‘Spanky Corners’ is an experimental technique for using only CSS to produce ’round-cornered content boxes’ with semantically pure markup. It does not require JavaScript to work

Formatters and Optimizers

The Co-Founder of Smashing Magazine. Former writer, web designer, freelancer and webworker. Author of several books. Runs the business.

Post Rating
1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (No votes yet)
Loading ... Loading ...

Tags: , , , ,

Advertising
  1. 1
    Sam W
    October 9th, 2006 5:55 pm

    This opitimiser collects all your inline styles and creates classes for them then compresses them.
    Peace,
    Sam

  2. 2
    BlockStop
    October 20th, 2006 8:06 pm

    Very nice! These tools are very handy!

  3. 3
    Ivan Minic
    October 20th, 2006 8:12 pm

    Wow…. brilliant list!

  4. 4
    Keith
    October 20th, 2006 8:35 pm

    Excellent compilation of CSS tools. I’ve never an expert in CSS, but these will definitely help a great deal.

  5. 5
    Keyne
    October 21st, 2006 5:29 am

    Nice collection, thx!!!

  6. 6
    Constantin
    October 21st, 2006 11:14 am

    A good link to add, very helpful:

    free standards-friendly layouts: http://andreasviklund.com/templates/

    go check, it should be on your list. :)

  7. 7
    Dave
    October 21st, 2006 3:40 pm

    oh, sweet. now, if i could just get them to help me fix my site

  8. 8
    dean
    October 22nd, 2006 5:22 pm

    Very very helpful for me, thank you very much

  9. 9
    Suraj
    October 24th, 2006 11:07 pm

    WoW is all I can say. Thanks for these resources!

  10. 10
    borat
    January 5th, 2007 5:25 pm

    plzz add my link, its a nice php webbased css-editor.

  11. 11
    Chin Yong
    January 24th, 2007 12:03 am

    This list is god-given. Really sweet and can really help a lot of developers out there.

  12. 12
    Alison the Franchise Queen
    February 9th, 2007 8:41 pm

    Help!! These tools are great, but I need to know how to adapt the CSS on my site so that it is printer friendly. I particularly need to how how I handle pages with different content heights and get them to break at the right place. The main issue is to adapt the CSS so as not cut of words in the left hand margin. Can anyone point me in the right direction? Alison

  13. 13
    Mark Priestap
    April 23rd, 2007 10:33 am

    Thanks for the list!

    What about wufoo.com?

  14. 14
    Ece
    June 16th, 2007 3:21 am

    Just a kid in a candy store aren’t you Barry

  15. 15
    lumonata - bali web designer
    July 31st, 2007 5:40 pm

    thank you for all of your article in this site. its very helpfull for me as a newbee.

  16. 16
    Nishanthe
    August 9th, 2007 5:57 pm

    Thank you for the useful list.
    -Nish

  17. 17
    Fahid
    August 23rd, 2007 1:46 pm

    Thanks for this handy tools……

    very helpful…….

  18. 18
    Matt M
    October 2nd, 2007 11:03 am

    I like to post my CSS tool as well, if anyone is interested:

    CSS Color Extractor Tool

    You can copy and paste CSS code, and it will visually display to you the results of the colors.

  19. 19
    Alison
    October 18th, 2007 5:53 pm

    Thanks for these useful links to the CSS tools! I’ve used several of them now and I have to say that the Layout-o-matic is without a doubt a fave.

    Thanks again.

  20. 20
    Andres
    December 7th, 2007 2:49 am

    Maybe you should include this in your list: http://www.cssbuttons.net

    CSS Buttons will allow designers to quickly implement consistently looking, cross-browser, buttons regardless of the element used. CSS Buttons is a plug n’ play solution for Multilingual, CMS, Blogs, and similar web sites faced with dynamic content challenges.

  21. 21
    Todd Loss
    December 28th, 2007 11:13 am

    this is a great list, thankyou very much for the article

  22. 22
    Jeff Adams
    January 2nd, 2008 1:09 pm

    awesome article, tools are massivley handy thanks very much Smashing Magazine!!!

  23. 23
    uzamax
    January 17th, 2008 4:54 pm

    CSS Buttons will allow designers to quickly implement consistently looking, cross-browser, buttons regardless of the element used. CSS Buttons is a plug n’ play solution for Multilingual…

  24. 24
    chris Larson
    March 10th, 2008 11:41 am

    Sweet list thanks. I’ve used a few of these sites. I posted your list on listdid.com

  25. 25
    adria
    March 31st, 2008 8:12 am

    This list is amazing and so useful! Thanks so much! Does anyone know of a similar list of tools/tips for developers (especially PHP)?

  26. 26
    kunter
    April 15th, 2008 10:28 pm

    and so is why this site is second to none. best regards

  27. 27
    Gazebo - Music Videos India
    April 19th, 2008 8:54 pm

    Thanks GR8 list, I want to ask a question about color options in a website I want to put 3 color options for my website i.e. 1 will be default color, and 2 colors of choices I want to put 3 buttons ( with 3 different colors – Red, Green, Grey ) in my website , when on clicked 1st button it will show the website in Red color and when I click 2nd button It will change the color of the whole website from Red to Green and same process for third button.
    Thanks

  28. 28
    sezer
    August 10th, 2008 3:49 am

    CSS “Cascading Style Sheets” Lessons
    css list style Properties and examples — http://css-lessons.ucoz.com/list-css-examples.htm

  29. 29
    Jens Meiert
    August 19th, 2008 3:35 am

    Oh, I hope I may point out that UITest.com features yet additional tools, not just related to CSS.

  30. 30
    rap dinle
    September 29th, 2008 2:00 pm

    C marrant. Je suis tombé sur le site par hasard et j’ai me rendre compte de se qui m’attends en Inde. J’y vais dans 4 mois. Je suis vraiment impatient. Belles Photos, beaux “reportages”. Cool

  31. 31
    Neel
    November 26th, 2008 9:37 am

    Very useful stuff, I appreciate ur hard work. I am basically looking for navigation with submenus in it. Can you list an example of that sort. thanks

  32. 32
    Dane
    December 21st, 2008 12:14 pm

    I am now a regular reader of this site…Thanks!

  33. 33
    ForumKD
    December 29th, 2008 2:32 pm

    very very thanx…

  34. 34
    Jamiel Sharief
    January 31st, 2009 4:40 am

    Thanks for putting together this list, its great. Keep up the good work.

  35. 35
    car jacks
    March 14th, 2009 4:32 am

    It’s the first time I comment here and I must say you share genuine, and quality information for bloggers! Good job.
    p.s. You have an awesome template . Where have you got it from?

  36. 36
    investor
    March 18th, 2009 1:17 am

    This is a very comprehensive list, thank you!

  37. 37
    Michal Zigo
    April 6th, 2009 2:20 am

    Very nice. Thanks!

  38. 38
    Frato
    April 22nd, 2009 8:34 am

    YASC (Yet Another Sprite Creator), an easy tool to generate your css rules for your sprite images : http://www.lecentre.net/fratoblog/yasc/

  39. 39
    Servis
    June 9th, 2009 3:32 am

    Some great advice there, excellent post

  40. 40
    NotAlame
    July 11th, 2009 3:18 am

    Very helpful.
    Thanks a lot!

  41. 41
    Muhammad Shaheer Akhlaq
    October 6th, 2009 3:41 am

    How to create variable for “backgroud-image:url()”

  42. 42
    墨匠
    November 2nd, 2009 7:48 pm

    can i translate it into Chinese and published to my own website?I will retain your copyright

  43. 43
    leander
    November 26th, 2009 5:48 am

    Hi, after a couple of redesigns (and some old pages are still in use) I have the problem to clean up my CSS. Is there a tool, where can parse a couple of urls and get an analysis, which css classes are not in use?

  1. 00

    There are no trackbacks at this time. If you are interested in leaving a trackback, please use this URL.

Leave a Comment

Make sure you enter the * required information where indicated. Please also rate the article as it will help us decide future content and posts. Comments are moderated – and rel="nofollow" is in use. Please no link dropping, no keywords or domains as names; do not spam, and do not advertise!



Advertisement Advertise with us!
Join in Smashing Forum
Post your job