Third Party CSS Apps to Speed Up Your Workflow

While Dreamweaver CS5.5 is a great program, it’s also quite expensive, so in this article we’re going to look at some third party applications that will allow you to create some cool effects without breaking the bank. Many of these tools are online, which makes life a bit easier.

Ultimate CSS Gradient Generator

If you’ve been wanting to create gradients for your layouts, Ultimate CSS Gradient Generator gives you some really great options. Here’s a rough rundown of the interface. At the top left are a number of presets. These form the basis of some really cool gradients that you can use “out of the box” or custom design your own. Directly below the Presets section is a bar that you can manipulate with the stop markers.

Here’s how it works. Simply select a marker and double-click on it to open the color selector to choose your colors. To adjust the position of the stops, you can manually move them along the bar or set the location in percentages. To add a new stop, click between the stop markers. To delete a stop marker, drag it down or select it and click on the delete button in the Stops section.

On the top-right of the interface is a preview of the gradient. Here are some things to note:

* You can set the orientation to vertical or horizontal
* You can set the size
* You can enable the IE checkbox for Internet Explorer

Directly below that area is the CSS and at the bottom of this section there are a few subtle, yet important tools. First is the color format. You have the option of using hex, rgb, rgba, hsl, hsla. This last designation, the “a,” is really important. This refers to the image “alpha” or transparency. So if you’re looking at the image code it would read something like this: rgba(41,137,216,1)

The last number, the “1” controls the transparency. “1” is fully opaque. Anything less than that will create varying leves of transparency.

The other important feature is: Import from image. When you click on the button it brings up the following dialog box, allowing you to import a gradient image or to use a URL.

And that’s it. You can have a lot of fun with this tool.

CSS Typeset

In this section I’ll input a number of values, just to give you an idea of what the final result will be. Here are my settings:

* DOCTYPE: HTML5
* CSS Reset: * {margin: 0; padding: 0;}
* Layout Width: Fixed
* Width: 960 pixels
* Header: Specify Height enabled 250 pixels
* Sidebars: Two sidebars, one left, one right, 250 pixels spacing for left, 150 pixels for the right
* Footer: Specify height enabled, height 75 pixels.

When all of these setting are entered, the blue “Get the Link” button becomes active. Click on it and it brings up the page above, which shows you what your layout will look like. At the top left is a link that states: “Download .zip archive. When you click on it, it downloads two files, a .CSS file and an index file. You now have everything you need to get started with your layouts.

Have fun!