CSS software

Partial CSS software list

Nearly all browsers nowadays support CSS and many other applications do, too. To write CSS, you don't need more than a text editor, but there are many tools available that make it even easier.

Of course, nearly all software has bugs. And some programs are further ahead implementing the latest CSS modules than others. Various sites describe bugs and work-arounds.

Support charts

Links to official feature lists of various products.

AH Formatter: 6
Firefox: all versions
HTMLayout: ?? (properties/selectors)
Internet Explorer: 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
Konqueror: 3.4
Opera: 9.5, 9.80, 10.00, 10.10, Mobile 10, 10.50, 11.50, 12.15
PDFreactor: 7
Prince: 5.1, 6.0, 7.0, 8.1, 9.0
Safari: all versions
DocRaptor XLS: current version (see Prince above for DocRaptor PDF)

Several people maintain independent CSS support charts:

WebPlatform Docs's CSS
css3.info's browser support for CSS3
Wikipedia's comparison of layout engines
Web Devout's Web browser CSS support
Alexis Deveria's Can I Use?

CSS Browsers

2014-08-18 Vivliostyle Inc. has launched an Open Source project to create the Vivliostyle browser, a viewer for EPUB and HTML documents. (See also the Vivliostyle Formatter.)
2014-05-22 NetSurf version 3.1 is a graphical browser with support for HTML5, CSS 2.1, SVG and more (RISC OS, Linux and other UNIX-like systems, Mac OS X, AmigaOS 4; Open Source)
2013-11-09 Microsys released version 5.0.0 of A1 Website Download, an off-line browser. (Windows, free trial.)
2009-04-17 The Lobo browser (current version is 0.98) supports CSS2 and also runs Web applications in JavaFX or Java. (Java, Open Source)
2009-03-23 Microsoft released version 8 of Internet Explorer, with full CSS level 2 support, plus some internationalization features from level 3. (Windows, free)
2008-11-25 Google has made a beta version available of its Chrome Web browser. (free, partly Open Source; Windows)
2008-07-01 Apple has released version 3 of the Safari Web browser. It is based on the Open Source HTML/CSS library “WebKit” (itself derived from KHTML). (free; Mac OS X, Windows, iPhone)
2008-06-19 Opera released version 9.50 of its browser, with support for CSS level 2 and parts of level 3. (Multiple platforms, including cell phones, free on most platforms)
2008-06-19 Mozilla released version 3 of the Firefox Web browser, with support for CSS level 2 and parts of level 3. (various platforms, Open Source)
2007-04-19 iCab, a browser for the Mac, supports CSS2 and can help fix errors in HTML or CSS files. (Free standard version, Pro-version for a fee.)
2006-01-16 Oregan Networks offers the Oregan TV Browser, with support for CSS2, XHTML, XML, etc. (Various embedded platforms)
2005-12-07 KDE (K Desktop Environment) has released version 3.5. The included Konqueror browser passes the Acid2 test. (Unix/X, Open Source)
2005-04-26 Cultured Code released Xyle Scope, a browser that helps you analyze the HTML and CSS structure of each page. (Mac OS X, German & English, free trial)
2004-07-26 Bimesoft released SurfOffline 1.4, an off-line browser, that supports CSS2. The application can download a website to your hard drive completely or partially, which you can then browse off-line. (Windows, shareware)
2004-01-14 Tao provides the Qi browser for consumer devices (PDAs, phones, etc.). It supports CSS1 and partial CSS2.
2003-07-03 Netscape released Netscape 7.1, which is based on Mozilla 1.4. (Windows, Mac, Linux, free),
2002-07-24 The Chimera project released version 0.4. Chimera is a browser for Mac OS X, based on Mozilla's Gecko layout engine. (Mac, Open Source)
2002-01-22 The X-Smiles team has released version 0.5 ("Oulu") of the X-Smiles XML browser, which supports, among other things, XHTML, SMIL, XForms and the CSS Mobile Profile. (Java, Open Source)
2002-01-08 NetClue released Clue Browser v4.1.1. It supports HTML, XML/XHTML, namespaces, CSS (level 1 and part of level 2), DOM, Javascript, etc. (Java)
2001-12-19 Microsoft released Internet Explorer for the Mac 5.1, with bug fixes and improved performance. Supports full CSS1 and partial CSS2. (Mac IE 5 was the first browser to reach better than 99% support for CSS1, in March 2000.) (free; Mac OS 8, 9 & X)
2001-12-18 OmniWeb 4 is a Web browser for the Mac (OS X) and has a built-in source editor (with HTTP PUT support). (Shareware)
2001-11-28 Galeon 1.0 is a Web browser for Gnome. It uses the Gecko rendering engine from Mozilla internally. (Open Source, Unix)
2001-11-07 Adobe produces an SVG plugin for browsers under Mac and Windows and for Mozilla 0.9.1 under Linux & Solaris. Supports SVG with CSS styling. (free)
2001-10-31 K-Meleon version 0.6 has been released, a lightweight browser based on the Gecko rendering engine of Mozilla (Windows, Open Source)
2001-05-15 Espial's TV browser implements CSS support for HTML, XML and XHTML. Since 2011, the browser is based on WebKit.
1999-12-02 Closure is a Web browser written in Common Lisp; supports CSS1.
Emacs/W3, a.k.a. Gnuscape Navigator, supports some CSS1.

These sources document the level of support in various browsers:

2003-10-30 Quirksmode (Peter-Paul Koch) offers tests and information, including a compatibility chart, that also looks forward to some features that are currently proposed for CSS3.
2002-09-27 Johannes Koch has a nice page with work-arounds for various browser bugs.
2002-04-09 The SVG working group has a detailed list of the features (including CSS support) of various SVG implementations.
2000-03-28 RichInStyle.com has lists of bugs for various browsers. (Careful: as of Oct 2001, there are still several bugs in the list of bugs itself.)
1999-09-09 Western Civilisation compares CSS1 support in major browsers. Since 2008, the compared browsers are Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Opera.
1999-04-12 Do you have fear of style sheets? Jeffrey Zeldman has the cure.

CSS Authoring Tools

Currently, most Web authoring tools provide some sort of support for CSS style sheets. The list below is far from complete, but contains (in chronological order) all tools that have been reported to us.

2013-12-13 CodeLobster publishes the CodeLobster PHP Edition version 4.8.2, an IDE for HTML, CSS, PHP and JavaScript, with code highlighting, debugger, auto-complete, etc., and built-in support for several CMS'es (SVN, Git, SASS, LESS, Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress, etc.). (Windows; free version (without CMS support), Lite version and Professional version)
2013-10-08 SyncRO Soft released version 15.1 of the <oXygen/> XML Editor. It supports CSS (WYSIWYG editing), XSL-FO, XSLT, XQuery, various XML- or XHTML-based formats (such as EPUB, TEI, DocBook and DITA) and also has an SVG viewer. (Runs on Java and/or Eclipse platforms, free trial.)
2013-03-04 The WebStorm JavaScript editor includes a CSS editor with syntax checking, auto-complete, etc. and support for the syntaxes of SASS and LESS. (Windows, Mac, Unix. Various licenses. Free for education and Open Source projects)
2012-08-15 Liquid XML Editor 2012 features a CSS editor, enabling you to edit your CSS document, and validate it against the W3C standards. (Windows, free trial)
2011-11-18 OverZone Software offers CSS Tab Designer, a WYSIWYG tool to design menus in XHTML+CSS. (Free, Windows)
2010-10-09 Daniel Glazman of Disruptive Innovations announced “milestone 1” (= version 0.5) of BlueGriffon, a WYSIWYG Web editor with support for HTML, MathML, SVG and CSS (full level 2 and parts of level 3). (Linux, Windows, Mac; Open Source)
2009-02-03 Improvingcode released snap{css}, a text editor specially made for editing CSS (Windows, source available for inspection)
2009-01-21 XMLBlueprint XML Editor by Monkfish Software is a full-featured XML editor that supports the creation and editing of XML document, DTDs, Relax NG Schemas, XML Schemas and XSLT Stylesheets. It also supports CSS syntax coloring and CSS code completion. (Windows, free trial)
2008-11-14 Oiko Software published version 1.00RC1 of their Oiko CSS editor. (Windows, free)
2008-06-19 Skybound offers a free version of Stylizer Basic (formerly StyleSpread) in addition to the non-free Stylizer Ultimate. Stylizer is a CSS editor with live preview, automatic validation, diagnose tool, FTP upload, etc. (Windows, free basic version)
2008-06-19 JAPISoft offers EditiX, an XML & XML Schema editor and XSLT debugger. EditiX also includes a CSS editor. (Windows, Mac OS X & Linux; free version available for non-commercial use)
2007-07-20 Version 2 of XStandard XHTML WYSIWYG editor for content management systems has been released. This version supports more CSS properties. (For Windows and Mac, “Lite” version is free).
2007-05-22 Panic released Coda, an HTML & CSS editor with webdav, ssh, preview, HTML/CSS references, collaborative editing and more. (Mac, free trial)
2006-11-07 Macrabbit released version 2 of CSSEdit, a CSS editor with preview (even for dynamic pages), checkpoints/rollback, validation, structure analyzer, etc. Since 2008, CSSEdit 3 is built into the Espresso Web editor. (Mac, free trial)
2006-07-13 Westciv released Style Master 4.5, a CSS editor with preview, info about browser compatibility, a CSS reference, “X-ray” (CSS inspector), wizards, etc. (Mac and Windows, free trial)
2005-07-21 Disruptive Innovations and Linspire published version 1.0 of Nvu, a WYSIWYG Web site editor, based on Gecko (Windows, Mac, Linux/X, Open Source)
2005-03-29 TARI released GoodPage version 1.0.2, an HTML/CSS editor with multiple views, validation, etc. (Mac OS X, free trial)
2005-03-25 Evrsoft offers 1st Page 2000, an HTML editor with multiple previews, CSS reference, wizards, etc. (Windows, free)
2004-11-04 Eledicss 0.1 is a CSS editor implemented as a server-side PHP script. It allows editing CSS files using a browser. (Unix, Open Source)
2004-01-07 cssed is a syntax-directed editor for CSS2 files, with a GUI based on GTK2, syntax highlighting, outline view, etc. (Linux, Open Source)
2004-01-07 HostM.com Web Hosting released Simple CSS 1.0, an easy-to-use CSS authoring tool. You can manage multiple CSS projects and import existing style sheets. Supports CSS2. (Windows & Mac, freeware)
2003-05-24 Macromedia's (since 2005: Adobe's) WYSIWYG HTML editor and Web-site development tool Dreamweaver supports partial CSS2 and integrates TopStyle (Windows & Mac, free trial)
2003-04-23 W3C released version 8.0 of Amaya, a WYSIWYG, structured editor/browser for (X)HTML, SVG, MathML and CSS. Supports remote editing and annotations (Open Source, Solaris, Linux, Mac, Windows)
2003-03-31 HTML-Kit is an HTML, XHTML and XML editor with plug-ins that provide, among other things, CSS and CSS manuals. (Windows, free)
2003-02-14 Bradbury Software has released version 3.10 of TopStyle Pro, a CSS1 & 2 editor. New in this version: support for Opera 7, the W3C HTML & CSS validators and Bobby. (Windows, free trial)
2002-05-02 Daniel Glazman (daniel @glazman.org) has announced a CSS editor add-on for Composer, the content editor of Mozilla/Netscape 6. This CSS editor is an open-source work in progress and can be freely downloaded
2001-11-26 JustStyle CSS Editor (version 1.2.2) is an editor for CSS1 style sheets. (30-day free trial, Java)
2000-10-14 Quanta is an HTML editor for the KDE desktop. CSS 1 & 2 support is in the beta for KDE2 (Unix, Open Source)
2000-07-04 AceHTML 4 by Visicom Media is an HTML/CSS editor for Windows. Both commercial and freeware versions are available.
1999-11-19 Bluefish is an editor for programmers and Web designers with support for HTML and CSS. (Open Source, Unix, Mac, Windows)
1999-08-04 En Vogue is a (non-WYSIWYG) editor running on the Atari ST. It supports CSS1 & 2.
1999-05-29 XMetaL (originally created by SoftQuad, now developed by JustSystems) authors & displays XML documents with CSS style sheets.
1999-05-25 Corel's CorelDraw (since version 9) exports HTML + CSS.
1998-08-29 Lewis Gartenberg has released a version 2 of a shareware tool, W2CSS which converts MS Word documents into HTML and CSS.
1997-12-04 A CSS mode for Alpha, a Mac programming editor, is available. (Shareware, Mac)
1997-12-04 Anansi is a project-oriented HTML-editor. (Free, Windows)
1997-11-04 Coffeecup Software's StyleSheet Maker++ is a dedicated application for creating CSS style sheets.
1997-09-12 Optima System's PageSpinner is a shareware HTML editor for MacOS with support for CSS.
1997-03-26 Sausage Software's HotDog editor now supports CSS.
Adobe FrameMaker since version 5.5 can export HTML+CSS.

Other software

2015-03-18 Expected Behavior offers DocRaptor, an online service for creating PDF or XLS (Microsoft Excel spreadsheet) from HTML+CSS documents. The PDF service uses Prince for rendering. The XLS service converts HTML tables, optionally styled with CSS, to Excel spreadsheets. (Free trial)
2014-10-09 RealObjects released PDFreactor version 7, an XML-to-PDF formatter, with support for, among other things, CSS Transforms, CSS Regions, Web Fonts, and running elements. Other features include support for HTML5 (including the <canvas> element), MathML, SVG, XSLT, JavaScript, and accessible PDF. (Java. Free personal version)
2014-08-18 Vivliostyle Inc. has launched an Open Source project to create the Vivliostyle formatter, a print formatter to produce high-quality PDF, using CSS. (See also the Vivliostyle Browser.)
2014-08-06 Grid Style Sheets (GSS) (warning: the site requires turning on JavaScript or turning off CSS!) is an extension of Constraint CSS (CCSS), which is itself an extension of CSS. GSS and CCSS are aimed at laying out boxes by means of constraints, instead of explicit positions or margins. An automatic constraint solver then finds the optimal solution. An implementation in JavaScript (built on the Cassowary constraint solver) is available.
2013-08-27 Alexandre Brillant of JAPISoft has made available a few small, online tools for Web developers: hex/decimal conversion, base64 decoder, URL encoder, Less-to-CSS converter, random text generator, QR code generator and more. (Requires JavaScript)
2013-07-12 PD4ML converts HTML+CSS to PDF or RTF. It supports inline and external CSS, can generate running headers and footers, footnotes, encrypted PDF, etc. Version 3.8.5 adds supports for SVG. Can also be used as a library in Java or Scala programs or as a servlet. The CSS parser is also available separately. (Java or .Net, free trial version)
2013-03-29 The Publication Standards Project is an advocacy group set up in May 2012 by Nick Disabato to promote the use of standards in e-books software.
2013-03-29 xhtml2pdf is an HTML/CSS to PDF converter written in Python. (Python, Open Source)
2012-12-06 César Acebal put a new version of ALMcss3, a JavaScript implementation of the CSS Template Layout Module, on github.com. It implements the latest proposed syntax for that specification.
2012-08-30 Tinycss 0.2 is a CSS parser for Python. (Open Source)
2012-08-30 Cssselect 0.7 is a selectors-to-XPath converter for Python. (Open Source)
2012-05-26 Stylus is a CSS preprocessor, providing a shorter syntax, macros, mathematical functions, etc.
2012-04-12 Compass is a CSS authoring framework (preprocessor), built around Sass, with predefined “mixins” (snippets of CSS and Sass code) for many common tasks. (Ruby, Open Source)
2011-12-08 CSS Agent is an extension (handler) for Microsoft's IIS Web server that acts as a preprocessor for CSS files. It provides simple constants and can also add prefixes to experimental properties. (Open Source, ASP.NET)
2011-11-30 Weasyprint (current version is 0.1) converts HTML + CSS to PDF. (Open Source, Python)
2011-11-18 Closure Stylesheets is a CSS preprocessor. It provides various kinds of macros and can also check the syntax of and reformat style sheets. (Open Source, Java)
2011-11-17 wkhtmltopdf is a command line program to convert HTML to PDF using the Webkit rendering engine and Qt. (Open Source, Unix/X, Mac OS X)
2011-06-11 The AXR project aims to replace HTML and CSS with XML and HSS (a language inspired by CSS): no incompatibilities thanks to a single (Open Source) implementation; support for simple transformations; delegation & object orientation; no need for backwards compatibility with HTML/CSS; advanced layout controls, shapes and splines, etc.
2011-05-11 CSS Crush is a CSS pre-processor that provides variables and macros. It can be used as a server extension or from the command line: source code and documentation. (Open Source, PHP)
2011-05-11 .less (pronounced: dot-less) extends CSS with variables, mixins, operations and functions. .Less is a port of LESS to .NET. (Open Source, .NET)
2011-05-11 LESS extends CSS with variables, mixins, operations and functions. LESS runs on both the client-side (Javascript for IE 6+, Webkit, Firefox) and server-side: “More” for Ruby-on-Rails or stand-alone. (Open Source, Ruby or JavaScript)
2011-03-23 Sciweavers's online style generator works by repeatedly picking the best combination of color, shadow, border, and font style from a generated table of previews. (Warning: requires Javascript)
2011-02-21 Unicorn, W3C's unified validator checks the syntax (and more) of style sheets.
2010-05-17 YesLogic has released Prince 7.1, a program to produce PDF from HTML, MathML, SVG and generic XML. This version adds PDF actions and some experimental features, such as Web Fonts in WOFF, a 'table-baseline' property (especially useful for math), and a 'border-clip' property (to suppress parts of a border). Prince offers many (standard or proposed) CSS3 features, including hyphenation, rounded corners and footnotes. (Windows, Mac OS X, Solaris, Linux (i386), BSD; free personal license)
2010-05-13 Version 3 of the Sass preprocessor for CSS adds a new input syntax that is a pure superset of CSS. This makes it easy to use Sass with existing style sheets. The Python-style indented syntax is also still available. Can be used stand-alone or integrated in Ruby-on-Rails. (Ruby, Open Source)
2010-03-16 Daniel Glazman (of Disruptive Innovations) publishes a development version of JSCSSP, a CSS parser in JavaScript. There is also an online demo. The parser outputs the CSS OM. (JavaScript, Open Source)
2009-10-09 TallComponents released WebToPDF.NET BETA which is a .NET component written in C# that converts HTML to PDF. The converter supports HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.0, XHTML 1.1 and CSS 2.1 including page breaks, forms and links. It passes all W3C tests (except BIDI). Aural features, script and HTML 4.01 frames are not supported. (.NET, free evaluation)
2009-04-24 Alexis Deveria created a prototype in JavaScript for people who want to experiment with the April 2009 draft of CSS Template Layout. Earlier prototypes were by César Acebal (2006, updated in 2012, see above) also in JavaScript and Andrew Fedoniouk. (March 2009) in the HTMLayout embedded renderer. (JavaScript, Open Source)
2009-04-24 Terra Informatica Software publishes the HTMLayout embedded HTML/CSS renderer with its own scripting language, extensive API, and SDKs for Windows and mobile devices. (Windows, free)
2009-03-24 Antenna House released AH Formatter version 5.0. The AH Formatter lays out XML and (X)HTML documents for print or PDF. It handles both CSS and XSL and includes CSS 2.1, Paged Media, GCPM, Multi-column, Vertical Text, etc. It also supports SVG and MathML. (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris, HP-UX; restricted evaluation version)
2008-05-05 Aurelia Systems offers Aurelia Reporter, a printer driver that converts anything you can print to HTML + CSS, for Web pages or e-mail (Windows).
2007-03-07 Julian Graham is developing SCSS and libRUIN. SCSS is a Scheme module for parsing, querying, and emitting style information. libRUIN is a C library that uses SCSS (through GNU Guile) for rendering documents on text terminals (Scheme & C, Open Source)
2007-02-12 c THE dot . de|sign (Christof Hoeke) offers a CSS parser & library in Python called cssutils, currently version 0.9.1 beta. (Open Source)
2005-11-02 Flying Saucer (current version is Beta R5) is a set of Java classes for rendering XHTML/XML + CSS (Java, Open Source)
2005-09-01 CSSToXSLFO is a program that converts an XML document with a CSS style sheet to XSLFO. It has special support for XHTML. (Java, Open source)
2005-08-19 Disruptive Innovations published CSS Selector builder 0.11, a program to interactively construct CSS selectors (written in XUL/XBL, requires Firefox)
2005-07-01 Dzianis Koshkin started the project MYTHcode, a code library including parsers for CSS and XML. (Object Pascal, Open Source)
2005-04-08 Tommi Lahtonen offers a program CSStoXML that parses CSS2 (based on CSS Parser) and outputs the parse tree as an XML file. Also includes an XSLT processor, to transform the tree to other formats (Java, free for non-commercial use)
2004-12-16 Libcroco is a library (in C) for CSS. It supports SAC and CSSOM, can apply selectors to XML elements and has the beginnings of a renderer. (Open Source)
2004-12-08 The CSS Parser (formerly Steady State CSS2 Parser) is available on SourceForge. It implements DOM2 Style and SAC (Java, Open Source)
2004-01-29 David Baldwin sells ThtmlViewer, a browser component for use in programs developed with Delphi (4, 5, 6 and 7). (Windows, free demo)
2003-07-10 Infinity Loop released new versions of upCast and downCast, which convert between XML+CSS and MS Word or RTF. Word and upCast together can also be used as a CSS editor: named styles will be saved as a CSS style sheet. (Many platforms, requires Java, free demo)
2002-10-11 XMLmind has released version 2 of the XMLmind XML Editor, a graphical editor for XML, that supports CSS2 for on-screen layout and printing. (Java, free “Standard Edition,” non-free “Professional Edition”)
2002-01-08 Tidy is a tool to clean up invalid HTML pages (such as generated by some “HTML” editors, unfortunately). It uses heuristics to replace bad mark-up with valid HTML and CSS. BBTidy is a Tidy cast as a plugin for BBEdit on the Mac. (Open Source)
2001-12-06 The Apache project released Batik, an SVG browser. Supports SVG with CSS. (Java, Open Source)
2001-08-06 A Perl CSS project has been started on SourceForge, to develop CSS-DOM and SAC libraries for Perl.
2001-07-09 “xselect” is a C program that extracts all elements from an XML document that match a CSS selector. Part of the HTML-XML-utils package. (Open Source)
2001-04-27 A Perl module that implements SAC, called CSS::SAC, has been written by Robin Berjon. (Open Source.)
2000-02-17 Useful? Or not? Anyway, DeCSS is a tiny (Perl) program by Mr. Bad to strip all CSS from an HTML file.
1999-10-24 SAC (W3C's Simple API for CSS) is in beta. Bindings to C and Java are provided.
1999-10-24 flute 1.0 is W3C's CSS parser in Java.