This episode was recorded on June 9th, 2012. ProCSSor can prettify and un-minify CSS documents, ensuring that they adhere to the formatting rules you select. Finally, we share one final tool that can be helpful when either working on a team or reading existing CSS.An IDE’s tools can be used to upload files to a deployment server, as well as dedicated apps like Transmit. Smaller is a great tool that allows one to easily combine and minify all the code in a deployment folder. After testing comes deployment, starting with minification.LiveReload and CodeKit can automatically compile code written in these languages into standard CSS. These languages are supersets of CSS that add helpful features like variables and nesting. Returning to the process of writing CSS, we discuss two preprocessors, SASS and LESS. Additionally, the Firefox developer tools have been greatly improved recently and are becoming comparable to the WebKit tools, even boasting a few unique capabilities. The WebKit developer tools are hugely helpful when tweaking CSS, allowing one to quickly change and test values, and when debugging, showing the cascade so one can diagnose specificity issues.CodeKit is a similar tool with some compelling features, but its reloading capabilities are less robust. A tool called LiveReload streamlines this process considerably by automatically injecting new CSS into a webpage as you save, which is especially helpful when tweaking the design of a stateful web app. If a design is started in Photoshop, the CSS Hat plugin can also save time by automatically generating CSS rules to match the styling of an object. Nathan has set up TextExpander to automatically expand abbreviations of properties that are hard to type. Beyond a good editor, there are a few tools that can streamline the writing process even farther.The app’s editing and terminal features are attractive, but being limited to working with files directly on a server reduces the app’s value. We also discuss Diet Coda, a pared-down version of Coda made for iPad.The Hints and Navigator panels are especially helpful for working with CSS. We’re all big fans of Coda 2 its recent update has brought its capabilities beyond those of Espresso. The next step up from a plain text editor is a dedicated IDE for web development, which usually includes previewing and deployment tools.Jason loves Vim for its many powerful shortcuts and built-in editing tools. Kyle likes TextMate for its powerful CSS bundle features. Nathan is a fan of Chocolat, which is lightweight but full featured. The software one spends the most time in when working with CSS is, of course, a text editor.We’re back already from our summer hiatus! Our topic this week is CSS development on the Mac.Your hosts this week are Kyle Cronin, Jason Salaz, Nathan Greenstein. This is the twenty-seventh episode of the Ask Different Podcast.
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