Introduction to CSS Formatter
CSS formatter is one of the tools in CSS for formatting the CSS code. Formatter is also known as the tool of beautifying the CSS code. This tool helps to add the CSS styling to the code. The process is very simple, the CSS code is pasted in the formatter which code you want to be formatted or styled as you prefer and then you need to select the options for what kind of code you want it to be displayed. This tool is used to format and beautify your code.
Working of CSS Formatter with Examples
In this article, we are here to demonstrate CSS formatter, which is a tool for adding the code styles after pasting this code to this formatter.
A CSS file is used to format the elements in the layout or contents of the webpage. This file contains a customized, global property that allows displaying the elements of HTML. The formatting concept is completely different and has got nothing to do with CSS functions. This formatting helps to write codes easily and also makes easy to read also and also helps for easy navigation, etc. The formatting has no proper syntax rules for spacing and line-breaks as there are many different options. This can be seen as below:
div { width: 50px }
the above statement is similar to below other statements
div{width : 50px}
or
div
{
Width: 50px
}
All three statements above mean the same and do the same function but when we add the code to the formatter it might take any of the above ways as it depends on different formatter.
There are different formatters few of them are AH formatter which is a software program that uses CSS to convert any code of XML or HTML documents into any other formats like PDF, SVG, XPS, etc. Another formatter such as Cleancss.com is also a formatter that can be used to format the code. We can also format the code in notepad++.
1. AH formatter
In this formatter, it provides few access levels of styles which are given to style the CSS stylesheets. These levels are: It provides document default style, it also provides a wide range of stylesheet which can be applied to another stylesheet also. It also provides layout commands for styling the documents. This formatter with the latest version provides better support for the formatting of codes which also satisfies the latest version of CSS specifications.
2. To format CSS in notepad++
We need to first install this kind of formatter it needs to install the JS tool plugin in notepad++. Then after installing it can open in JS format and start coding in CSS where it will format the messy code into CSS format.
This can also be done manually by downloading the JStoolnpp plugin and install it by unzipping the downloaded file. Then we can go to the plugin tab of notepad++ and then select JS format to format the code in CSS format.
Let us see one simple example where we paste code for formatting the code and we are using the portal tool which provides different options to style your code.
Firstly we need to paste the code in the space given in the portal and this looks like as below screenshot.
Secondly, this portal provides different options to style the above-pasted code and this can be done easily with the options provided by this portal and this can be seen as in the below screenshot.
We can see in the above screenshots, that the options provided by the portal to format CSS code. As we can see the format options like Presets which provide options like “Easy to read”, “One line per style”, Super compressed. This also provides some style selectors options like what you want to inert after the flower braces {, before closing braces, etc. In this, it also provides a few Style properties options to format the code such as what to insert before the colon, after the colon, after the semi-colon, etc. This portal also provides few rule settings like whether to insert newline or space or none settings, etc. This also provides options like comments which allow the user to select whether the comments are needed or you want to remove the comments from the code then we can use this. Then at last after editing all the options accordingly we can click on the format option or if we want to change again then we can click on reset and you can edit the options for formatting the code.
Example
We had provided the code as below for formatting it
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
/* This is a single-line comment */
<title>Example</title>
<style>
main { width: 200px;
height 200px;
padding10px;
background: beige;
}
h1 {
font-family: fantasy, cursive, serif;
color: olivedrab;
border-bottom: 1px dotted darkgreen;
}
p {
font-family: sans-serif;
color: orange;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<main>
<h1>HTML Page</h1>
<p>This is a basic web page.</p>
</main>
</body>
</html>
So the above code is formatted as below as we have selected to remove comments in the above code and format the code and the formatted code is as follows:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Example</title>
<style> main {
width: 200px;
height 200px;
padding10px;
background: beige;
}
h1 {
font-family: fantasy, cursive, serif;
color: olivedrab;
border-bottom: 1px dotted darkgreen;
}
p {
font-family: sans-serif;
color: orange;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<main>
<h1>HTML Page</h1>
<p>This is a basic web page.</p>
</main>
</body>
</html>
Conclusion
In this article, we have seen how the CSS formatter is used for formatting the code so that it is easy to read and understand as well as provide CSS customized styles where it is easy to style any element layouts. We have seen what options are provided by different formatter. We have also seen an example of code formatting in one of the portal formatter. These formatters are most preferred in cleaning the CSS codes that are messy into some attractive and readable CSS formats.
Recommended Articles
This is a guide to CSS Formatter. Here we discuss the working of CSS Formatter with example of code formatting in one of the CSS portal formatter. You may also have a look at the following articles to learn more –