TopStyle 3.0 Beta CSS & HTML Editor

CSS editor adds HTML/XHTML editing capabilities

[papabaer]

There will be some interesting and unexpected competition for favorite HTML editing software when TopStyle Pro 3 is released. I just downloaded the v.2 beta of TopStyle Pro 3 and discovered that TSP3 is now also an HTML editor with full support of XHTML 1.1 in addition to even more CSS editing capabilities. I don't believe this will immediately cause anyone to stop using their favorite editing program, but it does open some possibilities both for integration and as a stand-alone editor.

The feature list is impressive (and I am a Homesite5 fanatic...), in addition to the W3C CSS validator link (already present in TSP2.5) there is a link to the CSE HTML Validator (must be present on your system) as well as TIDY with the options to convert existing HTML code to XHTML.

TopStyle Pro continues to integrate with DW, HS, Fireworks (and other external programs). While not as full featured as HS (or other dedicated HTML editors) by any means, the features that ARE present make this an interesting offering. Just don't look for many of the traditional HTML editor features such as table or frame templates. Forget about a javascript code snippet library or a list of CFML tags. In fact, don't even look for a list of HTML tags to insert. However, the combination of features offered stands out enough to cause some serious consideration.

All in all, this one caught me by surprise. It looks very promising, especially for developers who are striving to go "code lite" and make use of CSS for presentation.

You can read more about TSP3 beta at the download site. [bradsoft.com...]

[lorax]

Thanks for the info Papabaer, I just downloaded and installed it. Looks like it'll be a few notches above the v2.5 - might even replace Nusphere Advantage as my hand coding tool for HTML/XHTML - which is going quite nicely thank you very much.

[Marcia]

Thanks, papabaer. I'll download it and give it a try. I've used the freebie (Lite) but am thoroughly entranced with HTML-Kit, which has a plug-in or add-on for anything imaginable - except doing my dishes and housework, unfortunately.

[Robert Charlton]

It should be mentioned that TopStyle is the creation of Nick Bradbury, who created HomeSite. I loved HomeSite until Allaire took it over... After that, it seemed that each version was a beta that never got fixed, while the program itself got bigger and bigger. I eventually went back to v2.5 (yes!), and I've been looking for a replacement ever since. So potentially this is great news... a HomeSite lite that works.

Chami's HTML-Kit is one of the niftier editors I've played with, and have sort of used, but it has no documentation, so I know I'm barely scratching the surface. Like, there's no introduction to plug-ins that I can find, so I don't know anything about them, and I'm too stingy with my time to join a newsgroup to find out. Marcia... if you wanted to answer some questions, I think an HTML-Kit thread would be great.

[Marcia]

Eventually, when I get it down, Robert. I love the features, which I only explore one at a time, but the documentation and interface could definitely be more intuitive.

Meantime, I had to get instructions in another thread here from digitalghost on how to use it to strip font tags, which I'm now doing with a vengeance. The beta that's out now, which is what I'm getting into, is the last freebie, it'll be shareware with the next release; so hopefully it'll have better documentation.

Meantime, when I reboot I'll download this Topstyle beta papabaer's told us about and give it a try.