CSS Sculptor from Web Assist
I typically explore all the Open-Source options for software before splurging on programs with the bells and whistles, which like those fitness machines cluttering your basement often sit unused because in reality you probably didn’t need them, but they sure seemed like a great idea at the time.
When I heard that Eric Meyer had joined forces with Web Assist to develop and release a Dreamweaver Extension that generated CSS Layouts, I have to admit I was already reaching for the credit card . . . well, not quite, but it definitely got my attention. Not only is WebAssist one of the few sources for software that I trust to produce a good product, but Eric Meyer is kind of like a CSS Sensei, the guy who most still regard as the go-to-guy. But of course I had to check it out first, because as I said, it has to be something I can really use.
Writing CSS can really be a chore even when you start to get good at it, and of course the better you get at it the more there is because now you’ve learned all those added levels of styling capability that you can utilize to the benefit of your webpages. And of course, if you’re still in the early stages of learning CSS it can be a little daunting staring at examples or tutorials that appear to be nothing more than reams of code, making you wish you were watching the Hockey Game instead.
CSS Sculptor can speed up the process of building the platform for your web pages by offering several variations on Fixed Width, Liquid, Elastic, and Hybrid layouts so you can hit the ground running, giving you more time for the ever important fine-tuning that gives your creation it’s ultimate panache. And CSS Sculptor doesn’t do all the work for you, but rather it guides you along in intuitive stages, with a User Interface that makes sense from the perspective of constructing each level in a visual way, and I guess in the grand scheme helps to ensure more efficiently coded and standards compliant web pages.
I love the fact that you can Preview the page at any step during the building process, and little things like the Output Tab at the end where you can choose to have your Style Page Commented or not (for reference on what the css code is for, particularly hacks for Internet Explorer), or the fact that you can save your own creations as Presets to be stored and modified at any time, saving them as Templates for future applications.
There have been some criticisms of Sculptor, such as the speed of the program which can be a little sluggish at times, and the fact that all the available presets are a little on the old-fashioned side, in other words there’s nothing really WEB 2.0 in here. That may be so, but the real payoff with CSS Sculptor is that it lets you develop the framework faster and more efficiently, turning what used to take 2 hours into a 15 minute process so now you can lay a working foundation down quickly and spend more time finessing the end result.
In other words, it’s up to you to design your own presets that will rock the house (go ahead, make the devil sign ..) and as they say, the only way to get really good is just run with it as hard as you can, and CSS Sculptor lets you run harder and faster than you were able to before . . .
** Check out some other Dreamweaver Extensions from WebAssist. A couple of my other favorites are CSS Menu Writer and eCommerce Suite.
