Thinking aloud about CSS editor

[PaulD]

I am thinking about how I would expect a CSS editor to work.
I am far far from being a CSS expert, so I could be very wrong at
times.
BlueGriffin may or may not work that way already... I have not used it
enough to know.

There should be no active user stylesheets, while the CSS editor
works, because it is used for web authoring, at
least in BlueGriffin.

There should be radio button choice, to choose the alternate
stylesheets that is active (or no alternates).
Sometimes I wish there would be more than one list of mutually
exclusive stylesheets by html page.
Like color theme stylesheet selection, and font-size stylesheet
selection.... but I think the css recommendation
does not allows that.

I would not care about internal web browser stylesheets... these rules
should be ignored in the CSS editor.
Except maybe, for the fact that they defined default values.

For each HTML element, there is a set of defined properties (a
property is defined if there is more than zero rules
suggesting a value), and an other set of undefined properties that can
be applied to this element. The defined
properties, have one or more rules, that are ordered by priority (the
CSS standard describe how a user agent (web
browser most of the time) should order the rules.

What are the keys by which CSS 'stuff' should be presented?
When we speak of sorting order, rules mostly means the selectors... so
that selectors have a priority.
-Properties (defined or not, alphabetically)
-Selectors (Kind: [ID, class, combinations])
-Declaration place (.css filename, header, style property).

Some order that looks usefull:
I think it usually does not make much sense to show declaration place
or rules, for undefined properties.
-Declaration places, selectors, properties (that basically means as a
stylesheet)
-Properties, declaration places, selectors
-Property Categories, properties, declaration places, selectors
-Property Categories, declaration places, selectors, properties
Maybe: -Declaration places, properties, selectors

For undefined properties, you basically have a new rule button.
After the rule is created, it should be inserted with its current
priority in the list of selectors.

The browser already have to order the rules by priority for each
property, to determine it's value.
It may not know however, where is the declaration place for each rule,
so maybe there is a need to annotate these.

[Daniel Glazman]

Le 19/05/11 04:59, PaulD a �crit :

> I am thinking about how I would expect a CSS editor to work.
> I am far far from being a CSS expert, so I could be very wrong at
> times.
> BlueGriffin may or may not work that way already... I have not used it
> enough to know.

A new add-on, the CSS Pro Editor, is on track. It's done at 80%
now. Trust me on that, it will be one of the best - if not the best -
CSS editor on the market. It will include a Selector Builder and
will give you full control on all stylesheets, style rules, import
rules, media rules, font-face rules, namespace rules and even charset
rule. Nesting of course managed. You'll love it.
I'll announce it on BlueGriffon's blog [1] as soon as it's available.

[1] http://bluegriffon.org/index.php

</Daniel>