WYSIWYG CSS3 desgining tool to produce attractive and accurate CSS3 scripts.
With a list of elements that grows version by version, CSS3 Machines by The Bequer Tools is an excellent tool to help professional and amateur CSS designers alike to produce high-quality scripts for specific elements that you can then embed to your web pages.
While other CSS editors allow you to design entire web pages, CSS3 Machines has been developed to help designers produce scripts for specific elements, which can be then combined to give shape to a full page or embedded to existing web pages. While some amateur users and novice designers may find this to be a disadvantage, more experienced users will surely appreciate the beauty of designing short and accurate scripts for especially difficult items in just a couple of minutes. This doesn’t mean that CSS3 Machines cannot be used to create full-featured web pages – it just adds some extra time to the overall process by requiring you to assemble all the different snippets as a post-process.
Thus, this CSS3 designing tool covers from simple text blocks to complex tables and progress bars, and from scrollbars and banners to buttons and wallpapers. There are more than 30 different items on the list, including HTML5 layouts and TXT to HTML5 conversions. Each of these elements can be as simple or as elaborated as you wish, so that you can add a wide variety of fonts, colors, sizes, images, and animations to them in a full WYSIWYG environment. As the corresponding script is automatically generated for you, you can focus on the overall appearance of the element in hand and stop worrying about how the complexity of the code. Applying different color combinations, sizes, gradients, fonts, etc., is performed in an intuitive and rewarding way, whose results you can check at any time by clicking on the “Test” window assigned to each element. Color palettes, sliders, and pull-down menus make the entire design process a child’s play.
CSS3 Machines would certainly benefit from a more compact interface design though. Though the overall interface is clear and intuitive, with a left-hand panel holding a well-organized list of all the elements supported, the pages that open whenever we select one of those items rarely fit in one single screen. Most if not all of these pages require you to scroll down to discover all the various panels, controls, and tools that you can use in designing the element selected. Though it cannot be considered a major flaw, a more compact design of these pages would allow users to have an overall view of all the possibilities at a glance, which surely saves time when moving from one section of the design window to the next.
The Bequer Tools’ CSS3 Machines is an excellent and intuitive tool to produce all the design elements that you may find on a web page. The overall design process of each of these elements is as simple as they come, producing high-quality graphic designs in minutes that you can then combine and embed to a new or an existing web page with stunning results.
Pros
- Extremely intuitive design tools
- Covers all elements supported by the CSS3 standard
- Creates accurate scripts
- Test window to preview your designs
- Suitable for professionals and amateurs alike
Cons
- The program's interface design would benefit from a more compact approach
- Creates CSS3 snippets rather than full web pages