Edit Style Sheets Outside of Visual Studio.NET

If you edit CSS files in Visual Studio.NET 2002 or 2003 you’re asking for trouble. I’ve already fumed on this subject before. I know we’ve been over this so many times now. I know the VS.NET 2005 will have all this fixed. Scott Guthrie promised so. Let’s move on.

In the meantime I wanted to share a quick tip on how to configure an external CSS editor within VS.NET.

Open up a project and locate a CSS file. Right click on it and select Open with...

When the Open With dialog box appears click Add... and browse to an alternate CSS editor. This can be just about anything: Dreamweaver, TopStyle, Style Master, etc. Click Ok and you’re back at the Open With dialog. Select the application you’ve just listed and click Set as Default.

From now on, whenever you double click on a CSS file within VS.NET, your editor of choice will pick it up.

Great tip - TopStyle is by far the best CSS editor I've ever used/seen. Just be sure to remember to check the file out BEFORE you open it in TopStyle since it doesn't handle source control (otherwise, you'll have to tab back to VS to check it out).

Very true! If the file is under source control, you need to check it out first.

TopStyle is great, but its keyboard mappings are so unconventional. Takes time to get used to.

I too have been using TopStyle as my default editor for quite a while. I am really interested in seeing how all the current problems get fixed in the VS 2005 edition.

TopStyle works great for me, I was able to learn how to use it in about 3hours. It is real easy to code css. I even integrated topstyle with Visual studio. I use it for editing all my CSS files.

The only problem with it is the menus, it does not have a standard menu like all other windows programs. All that it has is a set of menubars