Answers to frequently asked questions
Saving changes to CSS files
Changes made to a CSS file can be saved to disk only if the file already resides on your local disk and wasn't accessed through a server. At present, changes made to a remote file can only be exported (see below).
Exporting source code
To export a CSS file, choose "Copy Sheet" from the context menu of the CSS pane. (The context menu can be accessed by ctrl-clicking into the CSS pane.) The source code will be written to the clipboard.
To copy the source code of an HTML element and its descendants to the clipboard, make sure that an HTML element has been selected (e.g. by clicking into an appropriate view). Then choose "Copy" from the "Edit" menu.
CSS and HTML files can be re-opened in an external text editor as long as they reside on local computer and have not been accessed through a web server. To do so, choose "Open ... with..." from the file menu or the context menu of the CSS pane. To enable the "Open CSS with..." menu item, a CSS file needs to be chosen from the popup menu of the CSS view. (The rules listet in the cascade can be exported as a text file as explained above.)
Identifying obsolete rules
In the process of developing a complex CSS design obsolete rules may sometimes be overlooked. Xylescope offers a special smart group "Currently not applied" to find those rules. However, it is important to note that this smart group only checks the current HTML page. Rules that do not match any HTML element of the given page may still match elements from other pages of your site.
Sending URLs to Xyle scope
Web locations that are currently viewed in a web browser such as Safari or Firefox can be easily re-opened in Xylescope using a special bookmarklet:
Create a new bookmark in your favorite web browser. Choose a title such as "Open with Xyle scope" and copy the following text into the bookmark's URL field.
Whenever the bookmark "Open with Xyle scope" is chosen, your web browser will instruct Xylescope to open the current URL in a new window.
Self-signed certificates
Self-signed certificates are often used during the development of secure sites. To enable permanent access to such sites the respective certificates should be added to the users keychain or X509 Anchors as appropriate. For more details please consult Mac Help.
Viewing the output of PHP scripts
A web browser usually cannot interpret PHP scripts on its own. When opening a PHP file in a web browser only the source code of the file will be displayed. The same limitations apply to Xylescope. In order to see the results of a PHP script, the script needs to be processed by a web server. The web server integrated into Mac OS X, Apache, can be easily started from system preferences, but the PHP module might not be running by default. Please consult the Apache documentation for further details on how to set up PHP processing.