CSS

Maybe someday I’ll be a good boy and teach myself how to be a good web developer, but until then, I’m just doing enough to get by. I’m not thrilled with the appearance of my blog yet, and this is due to my lack of skills when it comes to CSS. Since I don’t know of a good WYSIWYG editor that creates nice HTML and CSS that is both affordable and available for Mac, I’m stuck with finding existing code that is close to what I want, and then hacking it a bit. However, even this can be complicated; looking at the rendered page and the source and trying to trace which element everything belongs to. Fortunately, there’s a cool Firefox extension out there called Firebug which helps a lot. To see how it can help, follow these instructions:

1. Install and enable Firebug.
2. Select some text on a webpage.
3. Right-click on the selection and choose “Inspect Element” from the pop-up menu.

That should be enough to get you started. Check out a screenshot of the interface.

Update: I’m testing Firefox 3 right now so none of my extensions are working. The “Inspect Element” feature of Safari is filling in pretty well. It should already be available if the debug menu is enabled.