Category: TopStyle

Richard Allsebrook writes about sniffing the user agent to serve browser-specific style sheets (via css vault).

FWIW, my opinion is that in the long run this is more trouble than it’s worth since it requires maintaining multiple style sheets, but if you wish to use this technique, TopStyle Pro’s “CSS Export” may provide some help. This feature takes a style sheet and creates a “downgraded” version by stripping out styles problematic to a specific browser.

If you’re accessing the W3C CSS validator from inside TopStyle, please be aware that Zeldman is reporting that the W3C’s CSS Validator is currently broken. It’s assumed that this will be fixed before long, but right now it’s reporting problems in perfectly valid style sheets.

(Note: this doesn’t affect TopStyle’s integration with the W3C’s HTML validator.)

Just a reminder: it’s almost the end of January, so the 25% discount on TopStyle ends soon!

Since I haven’t showcased many articles about CSS and xHTML here lately, here’s a plethora of web authoring links that will be of interest to TopStyle users:

• An interview with CSS Zen Garden’s Dave Shea
• CSS Hacks and Filters
• Search Engine Year in Review
• W3C advances XHTML-Print to Candidate Recommendation
• Pure CSS tooltips
• Simple Tricks for More Usable Forms
• The Perfect 404
• Accessibility Toolbar for IE

Special offer for readers of this blog: buy TopStyle Pro before January 31 and save 25%! To get your discount, just enter the TopStyle store, then enter the following coupon code on the “Order Summary” page and click the “Apply” button:

JAN-UIY1-TS

Note: This offer only applies to new orders – the discount can’t be granted for orders that have already been processed.

TopStyle Pro earned the highest rating in Access Foundation’s 2004 Great Software List, and received some very high praise:

“TopStyle Pro is truly one of the most well-designed software apps on this entire list…If you’re in the business of building web pages or websites, then buy TopStyle Pro and take your work to another level altogether.”

Update: FeedDemon made the list, too :)

I recently blogged about the support problems I’ve had with TopStyle’s Mozilla integration, so I’m very happy to see that Adam Locke has addressed these problems by providing a separate installer for the Mozilla ActiveX Control.

This installer takes care of registering the Mozilla ActiveX Control, which should resolve many of the problems my customers have reported regarding using Mozilla inside TopStyle. If you’re using TopStyle and have trouble using Mozilla inside it, I strongly recommend trying this installer. To avoid overloading Adam’s server, I’ve uploaded it to the following location on my site:

http://www.bradsoft.com/download/MozillaControlInstaller.exe (4.86MB)

Note that this is a stand-alone install based on Mozilla 1.5, and it’s separate from any existing copy of Mozilla/Firebird.