When I found out about Eric Meyer’s CSS Sculptor, I had to download it and test it. I was skeptical that it could really produce clean, well-formed CSS. I was happily surprised. It’s an excellent tool. The interface is very intuitive. I think anyone with a basic understanding of CSS could easily produce a full site layout with this extension. You can choose from 30 presets and several color schemes, and then customize from there. You have the ability to change id names to match your naming convention, or change width and height or padding and margin attributes. Background, text and link colors can be defined–you can even add background images and a print style sheet from within the CSS Sculptor interface. Your layouts can be saved as presets and edited as needed. Once CSS Sculptor generates the layout, you can work with it in Dreamweaver as you would any other site.

This extension can be invaluable to individual designers who need to work at a production pace; it significantly lessens initial setup time. I recreated my site design in less than 15 minutes. Larger firms could use it to standardize their layouts, saving presets that designers can share and increasing productivity. I think it really shines as a learning tool. If the comments feature is checked, the style sheet is saved with comments that explain the code. This is an excellent way for a newbie to learn to write CSS. And it validates!

My only criticism is that shorthand isn’t used as much as it should be. Other than than, I think it’s well worth the price.

While we’re on the topic of CSS, check out Sitepoint’s new online CSS Reference - http://reference.sitepoint.com/css. Finally, everything you need to know in one place. Way to go, Sitepoint!

Smashing Magazine has put together an article called 70 Expert Ideas for Better CSS Coding full of great CSS Tips. The typography tips are especially helpful.

Having said that…as I work with CSS, I’m finding that it’s easy to get lost in the technology and lose focus on the aesthetics. I was reminded of this while reading Jason Beaird’s The Principles of Beautiful Web Design. I highly recommend this book. It covers basic design principles like composition and color very well, and Beaird makes great suggestions for creating a reliable design process. I particularly like the idea of initially laying out a site on paper (yes, paper) and then working in Photoshop to create a comp, so you don’t get caught up in the technical aspects until you have a solid visual to work with. You can download a free chapter from Sitepoint (use the link above).