CSS is the essential component of modern web design. But writing the CSS code from scratch for each web design project is a tiring and time-consuming job. Here are 15 CSS tools ranging from layout generators, form generators to code compressors that will save you a lot of time writing the CSS code for your next web design.
1. CSS Typeset
CSS Typeset is a handy tool that allows to test different font-styles on a piece of text and provides with the CSS code for chosen font-style that you can copy paste into your stylesheet quickly.
2. TypeTester
TypeTester is similar to CSS Typeset but with this, you can compare three different font-styles simultaneously and choose the one you find suitable. It also lets you specify the base font-size to adjust the em values.
3. CSS Frame Generator
CSS Frame Generator generates an empty CSS frame for provided HTML elements. Just copy paste the XHTML content and it’ll create a CSS Frame and then you can add styles to the CSS frame which will save you a lot of time.
4. YAML Builder
YAML Builder is another layout generation tool that uses YAML framework to create grid layouts.
5. JotForm
JotForm makes creating HTML forms a breeze. With its Visual drag drop interface, you can quickly create HTML forms. Also there are pre-built templates like registration form, feedback form which you can use to set up your web forms in almost no time.
6. CSS Sprite Generator
CSS Sprite Generator is a big time saver. Just upload a zip file containing all the images you want to convert into CSS sprite, it’ll not only create the sprite image but will also provide you with CSS styles which you can quickly use in your web page to utilize CSS sprites.
7. W3C CSS Validator
W3C CSS validator is perhaps the most widely used CSS validator. It is a great time saver in the sense as it points out various errors within your stylesheet so that you can create better and more accessible web pages.
8. Format CSS
With FormatCSS, you can upload your CSS code and select from the options available to achieve code formatting the way you want. For example you can convert a compact CSS code into readable form with proper line-breaks and indentation or vice-versa.
9. CSS Optimizer
CSS Optimizer is a tool for optimizing the file size of CSS files. It extracts every whitespace character out of CSS file to considerably reduce the file size.
10. CSSTidy
CSSTidy is an open source CSS optimizer and parser that cleans up unnecessary white space within CSS file, modifies the color values to reduce the file size and optimizes margin, padding values and removes the last semi-colon from style definitions to reduce the file size.
If you know of some other CSS tool that you think should be listed here, do tell us in comments below.