Editing CSS on a Mac
Christopher lately asked which programs I use to edit CSS on the mac. I’ll provide you with a short list of recommendations 
TextEdit—not the greatest tool, but it’s available on your mac
The fastest way to edit CSS files on a new mac is to use the software that’s delivered with it. Not my choice, since it doesn’t do any code higlighting, but you could work with it—at least for the time until you’ve got a better tool.
TextEdit can be found on any mac inside of the applications folder. If you want to compare it to heavy word processing software such as Microsoft Word, it’s very lightweight and fast—it’s no real code editor though it is possible to use it for that purpose.
Conclusion: It’s possible to edit CSS files with the Mac OS X on board tool TextEdit, but if you’ve got the choice, choose wisely depending on your needs.
TextMate—all-in-one editor suitable for every purpose
TextMate is the greatest code editor I know—it simply does everything. It highlights code in whatever scripting language you can think of—correctly and clearly laid out, of course. You can find new tricks every day when working with TextMate—and since it’s extendable you can even twitter through it.
Try and buy TextMate (39$) from Macromates.com and read some tutorials about it—it’s absolutely mind-blowing!
CSSEdit—the app that rocks my CSS
CSSEdit is the only one of these three apps that’s specialised exclusively on CSS—and the best one to help you do this job.
CSSEdit is better than TextEdit, because it highlights your code—it’s easier to read, you can work faster. But didn’t TextMate have this feature as well? Yes. But there’s one thing that clearly puts CSSEdit in front if you’re comparing the capability of editing CSS: If you don’t want to type in your CSS code by hand or forgot the right order for the values of a shorthand—you’ve got a simple form at hand, just fill it in.
Get CSSEdit at 29,95$—it’s worth the price tag.
Disclaimer: I’m not affiliated with any one of the producers of the recommended software and there are certainly alternatives as well—but I tried some, and these are the ones that worked best for me.
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Great!
Thanx for recommendation, as soon I will get my iMac I will try one of those programms.
Regards, Chris
Enjoy it!
skEdit is also a good editor – it’s not as comfortable in terms of CSS as CSS Edit but it also handled HTML and PHP with highlighting etc. and has a well-equipped FTP/SFTP client built in.
As a matter of fact skEdit was the first editor I used on the mac—I used it for PHP, (X)HTML and CSS as well.
But after getting to know Ruby on Rails and thus TextMate, I couldn’t resist and ditched skEdit in favor of the almighty TextMate. Nevertheless I still own a license of skEdit
Xyle Scope. Seriously, check it out.
I write all my CSS by hand, but Xyle Scope is amazing for trouble shooting, especially when jumping into CSS that you didn’t write.
Thank you for the reminder—I did indeed try it, but a lot of time passed by since.
Just downloaded it again‚Ķ I’ll test it a little bit‚ÄîI’m sure it could be of great use, but since I already have a licence for CSSEdit‚Ķ
You might try giving Smultron a whirl.
The snippets library is fantastic. You can even save snippets of code and assign key commands to them!
Sorry, I should have provided the link and mentioned that it is open source and free.
Check out Smultron here.
I’ll check it out as soon as time allows me. It’s on my list now‚Äîthank you for the hint!
I know this post is a little old now but I wanted to mention Coda from Panic. I have been using it for the past few months it seems to have pretty good css support and is very easy to work with.
I actually have Coda installed on my Mac, but I didn’t do enough testing yet. It’s not that it isn’t useful, but until now the combination of TextMate, Transmit and CSSEdit give me everything I need.