Some Useful CSS Tools for Front-End Developers
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a coding language usually used for front end programming.
Web developers use CSS to manage the visual aesthetics of a web page. CSS allows you to change the color of the text, font style, spacing between paragraphs, column size and layout, background images and colors, layout designs, device screen adaptability, and other similar effects.
At the early stage by studying others’ code, anyone can learn the basics of CSS. The key, however, is not just to read it, but to also break it down until you understand it. Once you put the effort in to study CSS, you’ll soon realize that it’s not as intimidating as it may seem at first.
But sometimes writing CSS is like fighting monsters in a tar pit. While CSS is one of the most fundamental technologies powering the Web, it’s not a proper programming language or framework per se. As a result, as soon as your project starts growing more prominent, so does the mess — the selector rules seem to be all over the place, and it’s hard to find what’s where; as you include fonts, external CSS, JS, and other assets on your pages.
I have listed some useful CSS online tools that I found useful especially for fellow front-end developers at the early stage of the learning path like myself.
1. W3C CSS Validation Service
The W3C CSS Validation Service is a free software created by the W3C to help Web designers and Web developers check Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). It can be used on this free service on the web.
Although many modern IDE will still catch errors or warning, it is still a good option to validate your CSS to the world-wide CSS authority. As a bonus you can use their CSS badge embedded into your web page.
2.CSS Linters
It is said that classical UI designers rarely get to hear about or benefit from a linter. On the other hand, programmers who use good text editors like VS Code, Sublime Text, or other IDEs know linter tool very well since it’s second nature to them. If you’re one of those CSS developers who gets drowned in messy CSS, you could benefit from a linter.
Simply put, a linter is a program that checks your code for errors and inconsistencies. It does this with the help of a set of rules that it has for figuring out what’s wrong and what’s inconsistent. Good linters integrate with IDEs and code editors and can be configured to run every time you save the source file. They also help you with color previews, errors, and auto-completion as you’re composing your CSS files.
If you follow a particular CSS styling and formatting, you can tweak the linter to your satisfaction. This ensures that the CSS within a project follows the same style guide (the linter can also be configured to auto-format the file every save/commit the source code). So, whether you’re working in a team or alone, a linter is always a great addition to your project workflow.
CssLint (online tool)
3. CSS Specificity Calculators
If there are two or more conflicting CSS rules that point to the same element, the browser follows some rules to determine which one is most specific and therefore wins out.
Think of specificity as a score/rank that determines which style declarations are ultimately applied to an element.
The universal selector (*) has low specificity, while ID selectors are highly specific! The !important value appended a CSS property value is an automatic win. It overrides even inline styles from the markup. The only way an !important value can be overridden is with another !important rule declared later in the CSS.
This topic might be trick especially at the early stage of front-end development learning path. There some online tools might be helpful to compare and order the CSS rules:
Polypane
Specificity Calculator
4. CSS Generators
As a front-end developer sometimes you might be looking for shortcuts to save time in their routine. Many great dev tools ease the process, and it’s now easier than ever to jump in and get a finished product quickly. With the rise of browser-based IDEs it seems web development is becoming less fixed to the desktop. You can write code from any computer, and even test the result live in your browser.
Free online code generators will help you iterate and build onto your code quickly. Once you know what code you need to generate, it’s just a matter of finding the right tool for the job. You can try the following tools for generating CSS, and they’re all completely free to use.
Final words..
There’s a plethora of online resources out there to help you learn to code. And while you can teach yourself CSS, you’ll need to invest in an online web development course of your choice if you want to learn the full scope of technical abilities and soft skills that lead to a long-term full-stack career. This brings in commitment and an orderly study medium. You can be sure that a course will not teach you all, but you will join a developer community faster and learn fast.
And tha last word: Learn CSS before diving into the world of back-end development. Or otherwise…
