If you are doing any kind of web development then you need to write and edit Cascading Style Sheets or CSS. Or at least you should.

Some people mix all their styling in with the HTML, often because that’s how their WYSIWYG editor does it for them. But I don’t think that is a good way to produce web pages. The main reason is that What You See Is Definitely Not What You Get. OK, you may get it, but someone else using a different browser may not. So I think that the best way to produce web pages is to hand code them.

And the best way to style them is to use CSS. There are a thousand reasons to go this route. Read Eric Meyer or Jeffrey Zeldman or Molly Holzschlag or a thousand other web gurus to find out why.

So, let’s take it for granted that you are using CSS to style your web page. How do you edit the CSS? You go and get yourself a copy of Style Master, which is a product of Western Civilization, an Australian company which, I think, is located in Bondi, home of Australia’s most famous, although not its best, beach.

Should you use Style Master because it is Australian? Absolutely not! You should use it because it works, and it works very well. They have very satisfied users all around the world. Along with TopStyle it is, in my opinion, the best CSS editor that I have found. TopStyle and Style Master will both do what you want. I have tried both and have stuck with Style Master now for the last couple of years.

I don’t, in fact, do a lot of web development. That means that when I get back to it, like I am now, there are many things that I have forgotten. Style Master fills in the gaps in my knowledge. There are wizards for creating sites from scratch, using valid CSS. There are on line tutorials, good documentation, and even a related product called Layout Master. Layout Master is no longer a supported product, you can read why at their site. However, while I don’t use it for building sites, I found it to be a good tool to help me learn about absolute positioning of elements on web sites. It is a free download and could be useful if you are starting out in web design.

You will also find a number of courses available for download at very reasonable prices. I went through these courses a year or so back and they were invaluable.

The final thing to say about Style Master is that Maxine Sherrin and John Allsopp, the two people behind the company, are committed to web development and web standards. They conduct a number of international conferences, all of which are well attended with great speakers.

Disclaimer – I have no connection with Western Civilization and have never met or spoken to either Maxine Sherrin or John Allsopp, although Maxine did respond to an email I sent to her about 18 months ago.