Western Civilization has released version 4.5 (quickly updated to 4.5.1) of its flagship CSS editor, Style Master, making the creation of good-looking Web pages easier than ever. TidBITS has followed the growth and development of Style Master for many years.

<http://www.westciv.com/style_master/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/series/1266>

Changes are minor but useful. For example, previously, CSS statements were listed in the order in which they appeared in your style sheet; this version introduces searching, sorting, and grouping of CSS statements. Gone are the drawers that slid in and out every time you switched from editing one type of CSS statement to another; the editor is now a single floating window. Furthermore, if you know a property's name and usage, you no longer have to hunt among different editor panes for the one containing it, as there is now for the first time an additional editor pane that lists all properties.

There are those of us who wouldn't try to write CSS without Style Master, because its CSS statement editor dialogs guide your hand and head through every possible option so that you end up with perfectly correct CSS. Nevertheless, it's disappointing to find that Style Master's CSS analysis tools, introduced over a year ago in version 4.0, are not significantly improved; I much prefer, for this purpose, the gorgeous and brilliant dedicated CSS/HTML analyser Xyle Scope ($20).

<http://culturedcode.com/xyle/>

Style Master runs on Mac OS X 10.3 or higher, is not yet available as a universal binary (there is also a Windows version), and costs $60. Upgrades from earlier versions cost $30, unless you already paid for the upgrade to version 4.0, in which case this upgrade is free. Users are also requested to pay $20 for each additional computer on which Style Master will be used. A free 30-day demo is available as an 8.5 MB download.

<http://www.westciv.com/westciv/downloads.html>