[Request] - CSS Support

[Stacey]

Once again, I realize that you guys are inundated with more than is fair - but as a coder I know that you don't always know what people want if they don't say so. 

Something that would be really nice to see in a future version of JustCode is support for CSS. (And HTML, for that matter). With the size of Web Sites now, managing CSS can become a real headache, and Visual Studio offers very little support for this beyond standard HTML pages. If you nest any pages (Master Pages in ASP.NET, Layouts in ASP.NET MVC 3.0 Razor, etc) you lose CSS intellisense, and even in the default modes, there is no kind of refactoring support. 

One of the big appeals of JustCode was it's JavaScript support. Support for CSS would be really awesome. Specifically the following... 

• Refactoring [Name]
• Refactoring [Class to Id]
• Refactoring [Id to class]
• Abstracting [Pull style into class]
• Refactoring [Move class into a different .css file]
• Highlighting
• Sub-Page Intellisense [Able to see available .css classes on inherited pages, like Layouts (MVC 3.0) and Master Page inheritors]
• Declaration Re-arranging [Able to find groups of css classes and re-arrange them to preferred sequence for proper cascading]

Just my $.02.

[Jay]

Wow, I love this idea.  I deal with a lot of css as well, and each one of the above mentioned features would help a ton. 

[Ivo Bratoev]

Hello Stacey,

Thanks for your feature request!
I added a PITS item where you can vote for the feature. We will definitely consider it for one of our next releases.

Best wishes,
Ivo Bratoev
the Telerik team

[Derek]

Has there been any kind of update on this? This would be a much welcome feature...

[Derek]

Hey people, if you want to see this feature, we really ought to start voting on it! Go over to http://www.telerik.com/support/pits.aspx#/tracked/justcode/4555 and vote for it so they know we want it!

[Vladi]

Hello Derek,

Thank you for following up on CSS support. Actually we have began work on implementing it so I hope we'll make you happier JC user soon :-) We'll update the PITS item accordingly. Our bad for not doing it till now.

I will use the opportunity and ask you what features from JC you would like to see supported for CSS as well. Looking forward to hearing from you again.

Kind regards,
Vladi
the Telerik team

[Jay]

I'd say just about everything listed above by Stacey for one.    I'd also love the ability to easily find unused css.

[Derek]

I have a few things I would enjoy seeing, some of which are reasonable, others are not.

Things I see as feasible

• Javascript/CSS intellisense across the entire application. Tired of not getting it in sub-views in Razor.
• CSS 3.0 Hints/Warnings similar to JavaScript
• Brace Matching/Outlining with CSS just like Javascript/C#
• Go to Member support in CSS (class/selector)
• Find Usages in CSS (including Razor)
• Simple class refactoring

Things that I would love to see, but are probably too grand.

• DOM box Model per browser demo within CSS editor.

I do not know why no one has considered this. My only reasoning is that it would just be so ridiculously hard to implement and maintain that it is never worth the effort, since all developers can just install different browsers and do their respective developer tools to inspect this. But hasn't anyone ever wondered how much easier life would be if we could just outright unabashed see the box model in our CSS? I do not know if it would even be possible, but if I could select a class and ask to see the box model for a given (installed) browser. Legasi it up a notch, what if we could have it include other classes and see how they affected the box model? JustCode provides on the fly quick-error checking for C#, I can only imagine how much time I could save with some rough metrics of browser relationship in my CSS.

• SASS/LESS intellisense.

Since I got a hold of Mindscape's 'Web Workbench', most of my CSS has been done in SASS. This rendered ReSharper unable to assist because it would not examine those files, just their output. SASS/LESS are very popular and I think this is a good area to examine a one-up on the market. No other Visual Studio add-in on the market does this yet. (for that matter, coffee script would be much loved. not asking for the engines to compile them, just the intellisense in them)

• CSS map

CSS is a small language, but its impact on a site is grand. Even a good developer can very quickly become extremely lost in the myriad of nested, multi, inherited, and cascading aspects of the language. If JustCode could show a map of our CSS in a more UML type view, I personally know it would make some things easier to sort out. 

What would look great is if each class could essentially be examined like an object, and then declared classes that inherit from them be smaller child objects (imagine the rounded box 'classes' vs. the square box 'enums' in the default Visual Studio class diagrams). The extended data (imagine the dropdown properties/members from the visual studio class designer) would be akin to showing either the files that used said class, or if were even conceivable, the actual files and then tree-view list of the elements in each file that used them, with the ability to click on any class and see a series of lines connecting where it gets used.

Is this a ridiculously huge feature for something that doesn't even offer CSS support? Absolutely. Would it be [expletive deleted]? Hell. Yes.

[Derek]

I will add, I am very, very aware that the last three points on my 'request' list are extravagant and I honestly do not expect to ever see them. But you did ask, so...

Also, if said features were implemented, I would be very willing to pay more for the product. The amount of time alone any one of those three could save would be great.

[Vladi]

Hello Everyone,

Many thanks for your features suggestions. They are very useful for us and we are looking through them. As the CSS support is still under development your help is just in time and will be taken into account. We will introduce the CSS support in some of our next internal builds but we'll be rolling the features gradually. So stay tuned. We are looking forward to hearing from you again.

All the best,
Vladi
the Telerik team